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SNOW UPON THE DESERT 


BOOKS 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

THE FORTUNE OF CHRISTINA M’NAB 
A LAME DOG’S DIARY 
THE EXPENSIVE MISS DU CANE 
THREE MISS GRAEMES 
THE ANDERSONS 



S NOW UPON 
THE DESERT 

by 

s/macnaughtan 



NEWYORK 

EPDUTTON' & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


Tz 3 

‘^ / \%'hzs 


Copyright, 1913, by 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 




©CI.A358014 




TO 

CLEMENTINE WARING 






















T HE first day’s march is from the pleasant Resi- 
dency bungalow at Raxaul, with its little gar- 
den and its pathetically reminiscent English flowers 
set in demure and restrained borders. The garden 
is like a room which a woman uses for but a brief 
sojourn, yet stamps herself upon it, tempering it with 
her own personality. She must have home with her 
wherever she goes, and she scatters about her room 
the delicate trifles which belong to her — silver-topped 
crystal bottles and the like, inarticulate small details 
of an elegant toilet, or the photograph of someone 
dear to her, a calf-bound volume of verse, a blotter 
stamped with her own name, a useless little patch- 
box of which she is fond. Thus the desert of her 
room blossoms like a rose. 

England is womanish in this thing also, and where 
her sons go they plant memory-scented lavender 
bushes ; also geraniums and daisies in diamond-shaped 
flower-beds and straight borders, loyally preferring 
these to the grace and abundance of the tropical 
growth around them. The Englishman must have or- 
der, and he must have his lavender bushes, and he 
brings both, with the naive confidence of a child, to 
the very edge of savagery, and plants his little gar- 


2 


Snow upon the Desert 

den where a great army might fear to pitch its tents. 

The flower-borders at Raxaul, the verandah with 
its painted green shutters, and the trim garden paths 
are the most homelike things which the Resident will 
see for some time to come, for his way is far and the 
road is rough. His daughter, whom he takes with 
him over the mountains and to the distant snows, is 
a great personage up here among the hills, and her 
journey has the likeness of a royal progress. It is one 
of the small jokes never omitted from the journey to 
call her a princess traveling incognito. This excuses 
perhaps the indulgence with which she is treated, and 
makes careful service appropriate. The princess is 
not much more than a child, and she has a child’s 
calm acceptance of everything that happens. Her 
palki, with its sixteen hearers waiting for her in the 
road, is a familiar sight, and she knows by name each 
of the elephants swinging its trunk, as a girl at home 
knows the names of the ponies in the stables. It seems 
very natural to her as she comes down the garden 
path in a white dress with her ayah carrying shawls 
behind her that there should be bowing servants on 
either side of her short triumphant way, and that 
whereas her contemporaries may be learning lessons 
in the schoolroom, or getting a small share of much- 
coveted rides, she should journey with a train of 
elephants, or step delicately into a cushion-filled palki 
and be carried shoulder-high by yellow-faced men. 

All through the night she travels between chanting 


3 


Snow upon the Desert 

coolies, sleeping peacefully in the swinging palki, her 
father riding on one side of her and the man who 
loves her on the other. The stars shine overhead, 
and the lantern-hearers with their twinkling lights 
show the pathway through the jungle. There are 
fireflies all along the road, looking like the eyes of 
desert animals as we see them when they hover round 
the camp fires at night and peer out of the darkness. 
The two men do not sleep at all, for this first stage 
of the journey must be made quickly, owing to some 
delay at starting. And so they ride all through the 
sharp, cold night, saving their stumbling horses 
where they can, and little troubled by want of sleep. 
The girl in the palki does not wonder whether all 
Englishmen are tall and straight, and can travel all 
night without fatigue, and are careful to save their 
horses over the rough places of the road. She has 
seen few others. It does not even occur to her to 
ask whether all men will love her and serve her as 
they do. A princess does not question such things. 

“Did you sleep well?” they ask her, riding up in 
the chilly dawn. “We shall be at Churia in a few 
minutes, and then we shall have breakfast.” 

It is crisp and cold in the dak bungalow hanging 
like a nest on the hillside, which the sun has not yet 
touched, but the khansamah has breakfast ready, and 
some native servants are carrying kerosine tins full 
of boiling water for baths. 

The elephants wait down below in the rough road, 


4 Snow upon the Desert 

tearing down tender green shoots of trees with their 
trunks, and in the wooden hut above, England stamps 
itself for an hour or two with its tubs and clean 
linen and its voice of authority. An Englishman has 
a slow-moving mind, and does not readily accommo- 
date himself to the unusual. Where he goes there 
must be bacon and eggs for breakfast, breakfast must 
be punctual, and there must be the right to call for a 
clean table napkin and bath water, and to make it 
unpleasant for someone if these are not forthcom- 
ing. 

To the mystic wonders of the road through the 
forest and over the snows he comes, simple-hearted, 
clean, prejudiced, traveling with an unveiled woman 
for whose safety he vouches, careful for his lady, sav- 
ing his horse, paying his way, telling the truth, losing 
his temper, and with the saving grace of not thinking 
too much of himself. He can even rule without be- 
ing offensive. 

A river sings pleasantly all day long by the wood- 
land path, where the elephants do not need to pick 
their way, but swing along under the grateful shel- 
ter of the trees, their gray sides dappled with shad- 
ows, till the noonday halt is called. 

The magic of good service controls the pleasant 
three days’ picnic of the road; tables are spread in 
the wilderness ; there is a roll of bedding for my lady 
to recline upon. And the young man desires to know 
if she is tired, and says that when the long after- 


5 


Snow upon the Desert 

noon ’s march is over and the night falls he will leave 
his pony and climb up on the elephant beside her, and 
tell her all the ghost stories he can think of (and 
none of which he believes) to keep her awake when 
the stars begin to come out and her eyelids to droop. 

The princess has many possessions. The sunset 
skies are hers, and so are the hills, jagged, white and 
sharp against the blue which fades away quite sud- 
denly, leaving the far-away stars to act as lights on 
the road. The slow, unhurried tread of the elephants 
goes on, and in the short eerie gloaming the shadows 
creep up the hills. 

Out of the darkness, passing them along the road, 
come the small Highlanders of Nepal. Their keen 
faces have a look of intelligence and independence in 
them, and the ready knife has a bandit air, although 
each man ’s belt may have needles and cotton in it as 
well as the sharp-edged kukri. The princess thinks 
it feels very safe up here on an elephant, and the 
fierce-looking little men look small down below. The 
man who loves her is beside her, forgetting to tell his 
improbable ghost stories, inarticulate, as becomes his 
race, conscious only of the fact that his girl is with 
him. He is young, and sees an eternity only in hap- 
piness. Nothing else can last. Care belongs to the 
lower world; it cannot live in mountain passes and 
among the white snows. As the elephants swing 
along he tells himself that he cannot even bear 
to share her with the chattering intrusive lower 


6 Snow upon the Desert 

world with its care and its irksomeness. He and she 
must always dwell in these vast places which men 
call desolate with their parapets of dazzling snow. 

The mahout drones solemn injunctions to the ele- 
phant on whose broad head he rides. ‘‘Be careful, 
my brother, be careful ! Step delicately, Pearl of my 
Heart! Tread with carefulness !’ ’ The monotonous 
chant gives to the darkness its note of music, other- 
wise the jungle is silent, and he and she are alone. 
The world itself makes little impact upon those whom 
love throws near to each other; the jungle is sympa- 
thetic and silent. When night comes it seems to this 
young man that it brings thoughts too heroic for the 
common light of day. 

And now out of the darkness comes the barking of 
dogs, and the cries of natives, and the bright glare 
of many cooking fires, and strong smells, for a moun- 
tain village has been reached, whence the hardest 
climbing begins. The mountain village smells of ghee 
and goat; round about the fires are groups of pic- 
turesque natives, sleepless as midnight ever finds 
them, pleased to chatter throughout the dark hours 
and to overtake their sleep in the morrow’s sun. 
Through the swarming natives, and the curling 
smoke of the fires, amid the cries and the barking of 
dogs, come some Ghurkas in charge of a dandy, for 
only a monkey or a Ghurka can attempt to climb the 
mountain pass in front of them. The dandy poles are 
on their shoulders, and the stones slide and roll un- 


7 


Snow upon the Desert 

der the men’s feet, as, panting, they propel them- 
selves upward with their long sticks. Far up on the 
mountainside is one solitary twinkling light, showing 
where Sisighari hangs on the hillside. The dak 
bungalow there is huge as a granary, and bitterly 
cold except in the circle round the fire, and after the 
travelers reach it a long line of coolies begins to ar- 
rive, bringing bedding rolled in canvas, which drips 
with dew. Supper is laid, blankets are spread to the 
blaze, and sleep becomes masterful. 

In the Hill country of India the good things of life 
come naturally and without payment. There are no 
rent and taxes for a tent, and there is no shelter so 
good in the world. The river does not confound itself 
with water rates, nor does the mountain path de- 
mand our toll before we tread upon it. Yet the wa- 
ter is fresher than that which comes from any cistern, 
and the mountain path, unmade and unkept except by 
the tread of feet, makes pleasant walking. The air is 
vital, charged with some quality which no other air 
possesses, and every nerve responds to it, and is 
braced by the sheer keen edge of it. The soles of 
our shoes have springs in them up here in the moun- 
tains; a sense of pleasure is abroad from which we 
cannot escape. 

And there are still two days left of the pleasant 
loitering journey, crossing and recrossing shallow 
rivers with stepping-stones laid in them, splashing 
through them on ponies, for the elephants are left far 


8 Snow upon the Desert 

behind, halting for tea, and marching on again until 
the sun sinks and in the gray cool distance are seen 
the tents pitched for the night. 

It feels very like going home to arrive at a camp 
at sundown, in spite of all that has been said about 
the homelessness of the nomadic life. It is very snug 
in the clearing of the jungle when the cooking fires 
are lighted and the bonfire blazes and throws leaping 
shadows on the tents. 

And the next day, when the sun gets up, the frost 
on the big palm leaves above the tent begins to melt 
and to fall in great drops on the canvas. The grass 
is white in the early morning, and on the edge of the 
jungle the silence is audible. You listen and listen 
to it, and all the quiet which night leaves behind it is 
still there in the early morning, while the dew is on 
the broad leaves of the palms, and before the sun has 
risen very high. A little stream near the camp talks 
softly to itself, and the smell of the earth is like the 
breath of a sleeping child. 

The princess has never known any other world 
save this, with its misty mornings and its clear star- 
hung nights, its long, loitering journeys under the 
blue skies, its winter sojourn in the comfortable Res- 
idency House, and its summer in some cottage in the 
Hills. It is a good world, and she journeys along 
very comfortably with her train of attendants and 
the two men who love her. 


Chapter I 


T HE word that year at school was “mush.” It 
had almost superseded the convenient and all- 
embracing adjective “weird.” The girls leaving by 
the 4:45 train from Paddington described the crowd 
on the platform as 4 ‘ mushy, ’ ’ and when urged to take 
their seats in an overfull saloon carriage they pro- 
tested on the ground that eight on each side of the 
compartment was more “ mush ” than they desired. 
For some unexplained reason the word had ever so 
slight a flavor of sport about it. Those who used it 
oftenest and most inappropriately were accounted 
good sorts at school. 

They were a cheerful set of young barbarians in a 
cheerful state of fuss, and plain with the almost un- 
believable plainness of the English girl before she 
emerges into attractive young womanhood. Their 
plaited hair and useful school frocks provided a 
wholesome check to vanity, and their only beauty was 
neatness. Even a becoming curl must yield to the 
dominion of order, and the wild civility of a careless 
shoestring would have found no reciprocal courtesy 
at the seat of learning whither the girls were bound. 
The useful school dresses and the blue and white rib- 


9 


10 Snow upon the Desert 

bons, collectively known as ‘ ‘ onr school colors, ’ ’ were 
a suitable equipment for girls who played cricket or 
hockey on most days of the week, and were uncom- 
promising in their attitude toward affectation. Suit- 
ability was the watchword of their era, and ‘ ‘ no non- 
sense” their war-cry. They were an admirable set of 
girls, and knew themselves to be so; very British in 
their sentiments, very honest-hearted and honorable. 
But in the matter of outward vision the eye was not 
so immediately satisfied as the mind. And as on a 
gray day in London, when the streets look dull and 
dim, one may turn with a sense of refreshment to- 
ward some basket of spring flowers, fragrant with its 
tale of sunshine somewhere, so while admitting how 
sensible, how honest and how admirable were the 
schoolgirls with their plaited hair and their little 
brown traveling bags, a livelier sense of pleasure to 
the eye was called forth by the sight of a girl some- 
what older than the other young students, with her 
father and a young man on the platform. Her 
beauty would have been arresting even among love- 
lier surroundings. To-day it was her air of detach- 
ment that rendered her conspicuous among the bus- 
tling girls. She stood apart from them, glancing curi- 
ously at the scene, while her eyes occasionally turned 
with a look in them of unspoken question to the two 
men beside her. Her dress recalled vaguely some 
“costume piece” of the eighties, and was surmounted 
by extravagant sables. At her feet was a larger 


Snow upon the Desert 11 

amount of luggage than school disciplinarians usually 
allow, while a porter was trying to find a place un- 
der the seat of the carriage for a sumptuous dressing 
bag. All the luggage as well as the bag was carefully 
labeled and inscribed with the unusual legend : 
“Miss Lascelles, killed 24th September.” And at 
each corner: “Game, from Sir Hercules Lascelles, 
Inversnaith. ” The labels dated eighteen years back, 
and belonged to that summer when Sir Hercules came 
home, and took a wife back to the East with him, 
with her trunks and her trousseau and her wedding 
ring. The wedding ring was worn for a year, and 
the trousseau for a much shorter time, for the East 
claimed the health of the bride, and then her life, 
and the dress her daughter was wearing to-day was 
part of the bridal outfit of eighteen years ago. 

Miss Lascelles appeared to be a newcomer, but 
without the shyness of a new girl. She looked gravely 
about her, and then turned to her father. 

“I am just a little bit doubtful,” she said, “if this 
is going to suit us.” 

He raised his eyebrows in hopeless perplexity. “I 
wish you knew someone,” he said. He had no ex- 
perience of schoolgirls, but perhaps even his unaccus- 
tomed eyes could see that the small lady beside him, 
with her detached and interested air, had not very 
much in common with the vigorous, bustling, uncom- 
promising young life that surrounded her. 

“Are you Miss Lascelles?” said a governess in a 


12 Snow upon the Desert 

tone that left room for immediate apology should she 
find herself mistaken. “I have been looking for you 
every where. ’ ’ Her voice gained in assurance as Miss 
Lascelles’ identity proved itself by a smile and an 
extended hand, and the apology which was being held 
in reserve gave place to a little natural irritation such 
as a tiresome and unnecessary search occasions. “I 
had no means of knowing you, ’ ’ she remarked, ‘ 1 and 
you look so much older than most of our girls that I 
passed you twice, thinking that you must be seeing 
someone off.” 

‘ ‘ I feel very old, ’ ’ said Miss Lascelles gravely. She 
wore her hair coiled about her head in a manner 
which, with all its simplicity, had only lately arrived 
from Paris; her dress, which was long, was made of 
brown silk with trimmings of green, and her manner 
was one of naive assurance. 

“You will have to learn to get young with our 
young people,” said the governess a little sharply. 
In the presence of this girl standing grave and col- 
lected beside her large pile of luggage, with her dress 
of past fashion, and her costly furs, she felt as though 
she were speaking to a rather distinguished parent 
who was being kind to her. The realization of this 
mental attitude in herself annoyed Miss Grove, more 
particularly as the feeling was induced by a new girl 
who, if not actually crying, should at least look ill 
at ease. 

“Bustle in, my dear,” she said authoritatively, “or 


Snow upon the Desert 13 

you will be left behind, and I ’ll introduce you to our 
head-girl.” 

“You are most kind,” murmured Miss Lascelles 
courteously. 

She got into the carriage, and Miss Grove, who had 
a sense of humor, even after fifteen years of teach- 
ing, said to herself that the next time this small lady 
joined them at school the station had better be hung 
with festoons and laid with a strip of red carpet. 

“This is our new pupil, Mary,” she said to a yel- 
low-haired girl with enormous feet and a kind smile, 
who seemed to be exercising a beneficent rule over 
some lively spirits in the railway carriage; and the 
governess almost added as a rider, “You needn’t 
curtsy or kiss her hand. ” 

Mary shook hands in a hearty and painful manner. 
She was a girl who loved to say, “Feel my muscle,” 
and then doubling up her fist would fold her arm 
and keep it rigid, and require an exclamation on the 
hardness of her biceps. She asked whose pile of 
luggage that was on the platform. “You will have 
to get rid of half of it,” she said with frank amuse- 
ment when she found that it belonged to her com- 
panion. “We are only allowed a bag and a box 
each, and those have to be of certain size. Your 
boxes are bigger than yourself,” she said, laughing. 

The bubbling, chattering, wholesome plain girls 
in the saloon carriage began to be interested in the 
luggage, and thus afforded their new schoolmate a 


14 


Snow upon the Desert 

quiet moment in which to walk to the farthest window 
of the compartment and, letting it down, to talk to 
the two men on the platform. 

“I find it impossible to say good-bye to you,” she 
said in her grave way. 

“Say good-bye to me,” said the young man im- 
pulsively, “and remember,” he added with difficult 
cheerfulness, “remember it’s only for a year.” 

“I am not sure,” said the composed voice of the 
girl at the window, “that a year without you and 
my father will he possible . 5 ’ 

“It’s unthinkable,” he said with conviction, let- 
ting his forced cheerfulness go. 

“I cannot quite imagine it yet,” said the steady 
voice. And then the weakness which has its origin 
in no worse circumstance than fewness of years 
showed itself in a trembling lip. 

“We’ve always been just we three,” she said with 
a shaky attempt at an apology. 

The young man, feeling brave and out of temper 
and wholly miserable, would fain have lifted her from 
the carriage then, and counted himself a lunatic 
in that he did not yield to this manly impulse, but 
the train had begun to move and the carriage doors 
were shut. He walked up the platform with long 
strides, keeping pace with the slowly departing train, 
and Sir Hercules did the same. He had his hand 
upon the window-sash, and his daughter laid hers 
upon it. 


15 


Snow upon the Desert 

1 ‘Look here,” he said huskily, in all the weakness 
which last moments bring, “do not try to stick it 
out if you feel that you cannot. I will arrange some- 
thing else, or you can come out to me. For God’s 
sake don’t be unhappy!” 

A man ’s tears will make the weakest woman brave. 
As the motion of the train increased and their two 
hands were unclasped, Miss Lascelles leaned out of 
the window and called gaily: 

“My love to all the elephants!” And the next 
moment she turned her face and buried it in the blue 
cloth of the railway carriage in a very tempest of 
tears. 

“I wonder if we have done right,” Sir Hercules 
said to the young man beside him, who replied : 

“It’s pretty beastly, anyway, sir,” and tried to 
keep a note of resentment out of his voice. 

Mary Newton, with a heart large enough to match 
her muscles and her useful feet, supplied a suffi- 
ciently extensive newspaper to provide a shelter for 
the weeping girl. “Look here,” she said, “open it 
out like this, and get behind it, and I will sit beside 
you so that no one can talk to you.” 

Dimly, and in a manner wholly unsentimental, she 
was wondering whether those left behind can feel 
more miserable than those who journey on alone. 

At the end of some minutes Miss Lascelles emerged 
from the newspaper, outwardly composed, but with 
the ravages of tears upon her cheeks. 


16 Snow upon the Desert 

“What elephants?” asked a pink child with a 
plain little hat, who sat opposite the newcomer, and 
who had been waiting for this moment with breathless 
interest. 

“My favorite elephants,” said Miss Lascelles. 

“I do not think ladies ought to ride elephants,” 
said the pink child. She knew what everyone ought 
and ought not to do. 

The other girls felt that the subject of elephants 
was too big to be pursued for the present ; they must 
wait till the end of the journey, and then suitable 
questions would be asked. 

1 1 WTiy did you come to school ? ’ ’ asked a girl with 
round eyes inquisitorially. 

“My mind is to be trained,” said the new scholar. 
“It was an aunt of mine who thought I ought to come 
to school.” 

“Aunts! The cause of half the mischief in the 
world!” said the child. “If they are not telling 
you your back is round, they spend their time won- 
dering why you do not do something useful — as if 
one wanted to be useful! How old are you?” 

“I am seventeen and a half, but I believe I know 
nothing. My aunt thinks I am very backward.” 

“Did you never have a governess?” 

“No; my father taught me, and I did history and 
the classics with Captain Bethel.” 

“Bather fun. Who’s he?” 


Snow upon the Desert 17 

‘ * He was Assistant Resident, and now he is my 
father’s A.D.C.” 

“How weird.” 

“I learned French from Major Boisragan. He 
is half French, yon know, and he gives me the most 
charming romances to read. Is it pleasant to work 
hard? I do not know. I believe most of my life has 
been a holiday.” 

“Wait till you have tried German verbs,” said the 
child, “and aunts begin to tell you that you ought 
to learn to he of use in the world.” 

“In some ways I was of use,” the delicate lady 
in furs made answer, “because I was able to speak the 
Hill dialects. Also I did most of my father’s maps 
for him. That is useful, you know, in districts that 
have not been properly surveyed. But, since you ask 
me, I fear that he may have made the most of what 
I was able to do for him. ’ ’ 

“He liked having you with him,” said Mary en- 
couragingly. 

“We have never been apart,” she said. 

The round-eyed child, who scented adventure, wrig- 
gled herself forward on the broad seat of the rail- 
way carriage. “Have you always lived where the 
foot of no white man has trod, far from human 
habitation, and where everyone is uncivilized?” she 
demanded. 

“I think they are really much more civilized than 


18 Snow upon the Desert 

are people in England,” said the girl with guileless 
sarcasm. 

“Did you wear skins?” 

“To-day,” said Miss Lascelles, in an old-fashioned 
courtly tone of apology, “I fear I cannot trust my- 
self to speak about the home I have left . 9 9 

But such an ending to a recital of adventure was 
impossible. “What else? What else?” cried the 
girls, desirous of pushing romance to its furthest 
limit. The difficulty of obtaining an audience was 
well known to them; only a few girls will listen at 
school. Flattery was lavishly and ingenuously min 
gled with their importunate demands. Two small 
pupils prepared themselves to bestow worship upon 
Miss Lascelles, the round-eyed child acted as show- 
man for the present, hut her ambition hounded for- 
ward to the day when she might call her her Great 
Friend. 

“Did you dress exactly as we do?” 

The useful school-frocks and the plain hats would 
no doubt have been suitable for the Gilgit district. 

Miss Lascelles looked at the stalwart figures of the 
girls about her, blushed pink, and said with diffi- 
culty, “I have been wearing my mother’s trousseau 
since I grew tall enough to do so. But in Paris my 
friend, Captain Bethel, has an aunt who bought me 
many things, for it seems my wardrobe is deficient.” 

Paris clothes are too unusual to be approached in 
the commonplace manner. Either we must despise 


Snow upon the Desert 19 

them and wriggle comfortably in our own of British 
make, or we must accord them reverence. 

“Did you dress every night, even when you were 
alone ? ’ ’ 

“We were always alone, except for the Staff.” 

“Too weird!” 

“I suppose you grew frightfully conceited?” 

“I do not know.” 

“I love men!” 

1 1 Hush, dear ! ’ ’ said the reproving Mary. 

“How long were you out there?” 

“We were in the Gilgit district for ten years, and 
then in Nepal for five years, and that accounts for 
the whole of my life, except when I was a baby at 
home. Misfortune came to us when my father was 
made Lieutenant-Governor of the River Provinces, 
for that meant that my aunt discovered my lament- 
able ignorance and urged the need of education . 9 1 

A girl in spectacles who took prizes said in an 
elderly manner, “It may interest you to know that 
one of our lectures this term is to be on Tibet. ’ 1 

“I shall excuse myself from that,” said Miss Las- 
celles sadly; “it would be more than I could bear.” 

“There is such a thing at school,” said the head- 
girl, “as doing as you are told.” She smiled as she 
spoke, but the little reproof was given with intention. 

“I may find that a little difficult at first,” said 
Miss Lascelles simply. 


20 Snow upon the Desert 

“You come to school to learn things, not to enjoy 
yourself/ ’ said Mary vigorously. 

“Even a young girl may he a good example, and 
do a great deal of good/ , said the pink child. 

“And you will only be here for a year!” said an 
envious voice. 

“I have not quite decided how long I shall stay,” 
said Miss Lascelles. 

The girls pressed more closely round. Miss Grove 
in the next compartment thought she had never 
known them to return to school more quietly. 

“I wish to become more civilized,” she went on, 
“hut I think civilization may cost too much. For 
instance, it may cost me the breaking of my heart.” 

“Too weird!” 

The lady raised her eyebrows. “My father, of 
course, does not wish me to stay in England if I 
am unhappy,” she said. 

“You can’t just walk out of school one fine morn- 
ing, ’ 9 said the envious voice which had spoken before. 
“There are such things, you know, as terms, and ex- 
aminations, and reports.” 

“You must not tell me much more on my first 
day,” said the dethroned princess, smiling a little 
wanly, “for, indeed, I am already very much 
alarmed. ’ 9 


Chapter 11 


T ELL tis what your name is.” 

“Hercules.” 

“Oh, but it can’t he!” 

“I am afraid,” she returned, “I have no other.” 
“I am certain Miss Ainsworth won’t let you be 
called that.” 

“I am sorry. I believe my ayah, who was a native 
convert, christened me.” 

“I don’t believe that counts.” 

“I was christened by a bishop,” said the pink child. 
“I have heard that when I was born there was 
some fear that I should not live.” 

“Still, it wouldn’t be fair even on a tombstone to 
pretend that you were a boy.” 

“Call her what you like,” a broken-hearted man 
had cried, bending over his dying wife in a bungalow 
up in the Hills. And a native Christian ayah, taking 
a fragile new-born baby away from the gaze of her 
father who had no attention to bestow upon her, 
filled a gleaming brass bowl with water and bestowed 
upon her the only Christian name she knew. 

“I not know name for missi-babas, ” she muttered 
to herself and called the baby Hercules, 


22 


Snow upon the Desert 

Even Miss Grove, who was lax on some subjects, 
objected. 4 ‘Have you no other name?” she ques- 
tioned. 

“I am afraid not,” said Hercules, as if searching 
in her own mind for trace of some other and more 
suitable appellation. 

“We must invent some little name for you,” said 
the governess in a sprightly manner. “What can 
you suggest?” 

“Would you like to call me Omphale? She was 
the Lydian queen of the Hercules story, you know, 
so at least she was feminine.” 

“Perhaps we shall think of a little pet name for 
you,” said the governess. 

Miss Grove, be it understood, is not our Principal, 
she is merely the Head of our House — the house of 
the blue-and-white ribbon — believed by all who know 
anything about the matter to be infinitely superior 
to any other at the Priory. Miss Grove is not so 
effectual as the Principal, before whose august pres- 
ence we all stand in awe, and who is not even nice to 
parents, but we believe her to be a perfectly just and 
unaffected woman, attributes which we are inclined to 
think do not belong to all governesses. She has passed 
so many examinations that it has made her hair thin ; 
otherwise we believe that she might almost be ac- 
counted good-looking. Her sense of humor puzzles us 
sometimes. We come up against it quite suddenly, 
and in spite of all that we have heard said about 


23 


Snow upon the Desert 

humor being a bond of sympathy, it more often seems 
to us, in the case of Miss Grove, to be a curious sort 
of brick wall over which she is able to see, but which 
affords us no possibility of vision. On the whole, we 
approve of her; some of us adore her, because we 
must adore something. 

It is well that Miss Grove’s sense of justice is fairly 
established in the school; otherwise her treatment of 
the new scholar lately arrived from India might have 
upset our cherished views of her sense of justice. 
When Hercules Lascelles came in fully half an hour 
late for breakfast, and apologized in the prettiest 
grown-up way for her unpunctuality, on the plea that 
she was really too stupid about dressing herself and 
doing her own hair, this unheard-of excuse was dis- 
missed with the injunction to eat breakfast as quickly 
as possible, and to have dresses made without elabor- 
ate fastenings ! 

4 ‘If it had been one of us,” we muttered, “the 
fuss would have been awful!” 

To take another instance, drawn almost haphazard 
from among several, the ultimate destination of the 
new girl’s luggage had been a matter of burning 
curiosity with us all. It had been taken to the box- 
room on its arrival. What would be done with it? 
Would it be confiscated and the contents of the boxes 
burned? Would it be seized as contraband? Would 
it remain in the lumber-room, or would it be returned 
to the only Christian address which Miss Lascelles 


24 


Snow upon the Desert 

was able to give, and from whence she had arrived 
with her game labels and her grown-up dressing-case ? 
Above all, what did the boxes contain? 

Miss Grove helped at the unpacking of them her- 
self one Saturday afternoon with the assistance of 
the bootman, who was called in with hammer and 
chisel to help open some wooden cases. 

“I thought/’ said Miss Lascelles apologetically, 
‘‘that I heard my father say I should have a room to 
myself, and I brought these because I have always 
had them about me, and I believed they might help 
to make me feel at home in a strange place.” 

“But why tiger-skins?” said Miss Grove. “Did 
your father give them to you?” 

“No; I shot them,” replied the new girl. “That 
one over there is the best; it measures twelve feet 
from tip to tail.” 

Miss Grove sought in her own mind for a proper 
reproof. Such words as unfeminine and dangerous 
occurred to her, and it even flashed across her mind 
to say, “Don’t mention this in school.” In the end 
she sat on the edge of a trunk and remarked feebly, 
“I didn’t know that you shot tigers.” 

Miss Lascelles began to stroke the bright-colored 
skin caressingly, ruffling up the fur with one small 
hand, pressing the tawny stripes on the animal ’s back, 
and holding the big paw with its sharp claws and soft 
white fur almost as though she took some fellow- 
creature’s hand in her own. She looked very slender, 


25 


Snow upon the Desert 

small, and fragile, with heavy coils of hair matching 
in color the tiger’s skin wound round her head. Her 
eyes were opened wide under heavy lashes, whose 
upturned points gave a starry appearance to them, 
and there were shadows underneath which subscribed 
an air of pathos to the small face. Among the healthy 
vigorous girls at the Priory Miss Grove had a half- 
humorous fear that her new pupil, like some delicate 
earthen vessel, might get broken among the iron pots 
and pans in their helter-skelter, joyous hurry down- 
stream, and she had suggested to some of the cham- 
pion athletes not to insist upon it that she should 
join in the rougher games of the school. 

Miss Lascelles continued to pat the stuffed head 
of the tiger. “I got this one in the Terai when we 
least expected it,” she said. (The bootman stole 
back to the box-room again, and on the pretense of 
seeking nails lingered a moment.) “It was the most 
disappointing shoot we had had, for two wild ele- 
phants had got into the jungle and disturbed the 
game. Digby and I were coming home together 
rather sadly — that is if you can feel sad on an ele- 
phant, which I doubt very much. You know, when 
you’ve got your rifle loaded and the cartridges in the 
leather bags at the side of the howdah are making a 
sort of soft marching music, and the mahout in front 
of you in his bright-colored turban is rocking gently 
to the swaying of the elephant — well, if you never 
get a shot in at all you cannot feel sad. ’ ’ 


26 


Snow upon the Desert 

“I remember Jumbo quite well at the Zoo,” said 
Miss Grove, “I was taken there when a child and 
had a ride on him. I felt rather seasick. ’ ’ 

“I was taken to the Zoo the other day,” said Miss 
Lascelles. “It made me cry.” 

“We ought to get on with the unpacking,” said 
Miss Grove. 

“If I don’t speak about India sometimes,” said 
the new girl, “I shall probably die.” 

“You may tell me about it,” said Miss Grove, 
struggling quite ineffectually against the feeling, once 
experienced by her before, that Miss Lascelles was 
like one of those kind parents who come down to see 
their girls sometimes and speak with cordial polite- 
ness to the governess. 

“I will tell you what it is like to go tiger-shooting 
in the Terai.” She came closer to the elder woman 
and sat upon her heels on the tiger-skin in a childish 
attitude like some little girl. 

“You are on the march, perhaps, and you take 
your game pretty much as you find it; otherwise, 
you know, generally we shoot from machans and 
have a kill tied up and everything prepared. But 
what I love best is when we come down from Kat- 
mandu for our Christmas camp and just chance 
finding a tiger by the way. It is very misty up 
there in the early morning, and a white fog hangs 
heavily over everything. When you go out the grass 
is still frosty and the elephants are standing in a 


Snow upon the Desert 27 

long line waiting for you, swaying their trunks, and 
probably just as anxious to start as you are.” 

“They are full of intelligence, I believe,” said Miss 
Grove. 

“The pad-elephants take you to the edge of the 
jungle, and as they go along they tear up the grass 
by the roots, and dust the earth from it with a 
pleasant swishing sound.” The hootman frankly 
sat down on the edge of the packing-case and listened 
openly. “When they come to a stream they stop, 
and stand knee-deep in water, and then tread their 
way heavily through the sand and shingle to the 
other side.” 

Miss Grove’s teacher’s conscience (a sensitive one, 
and not to he confused with the conscience of Miss 
Grove as a human being) suggested to her that this 
would be a fitting opportunity for a few kindly words 
of reproof, and she gave it as her opinion, laboriously 
and unconvincingly, that all sport was cruel. 

“When you see a tiger,” said the young lady 
earnestly, “it is just one of the perfect moments of 
your life. You get your rifle to your shoulder, and 
the next moment someone tells you that that was 
a jolly good shot. There is nothing like it!” 

Two heavy drops hung on her eyelashes. “It is 
very silly to cry over tigers!” she said. 

Miss Grove assented, and shyly, being unused to 
caress, patted the yellow head which was now laid 
upon her knee. 


28 Snow upon the Desert 

* ‘You must try and make friends here/’ said the 
governess, speaking through the human woman, 1 1 and 
learn the communal spirit.’ ’ 

“I believe the trouble is that all are women and 
girls here,” replied Miss Lascelles. “I have heard, 
or read, that women are proverbially a little difficult 
to get on with. Is it so?” 

“It is one of the best signs of womanhood,” said 
the governess, who, to her credit be it said, could 
hear distinctly the flatness of her own platitudes, 1 1 it 
is one of the best signs of womanhood to have woman 
friends.” 

“I find,” said the schoolgirl, gravely and in the 
manner of one who enunciates a piece of far-reaching 
philosophy, “I find that there is but small advantage 
in being a woman if one is among women. That is 
one of the things that I have become convinced of 
almost against my will since I have been at school.” 

“You must have known many women and girls 
before now,” protested Miss Grove. 

“I knew very few. Once Mrs. Antrobus came up 
to Gilgit, but I was very little and do not remember 
her.” 

“I hope she did not come to shoot,” said Miss 
Grove. 

“I think she wanted to shoot herself. When she 
had left, I used to hear my father and Major Bois- 
ragan talk about her. They said that a woman looking 


Snow upon the Desert 29 

as she did should not be allowed to go out alone with 
a gun. So they always went with her.” 

“Firearms are very dangerous,” said Miss Grove. 

“They are dangerous if you do not know how to 
use them, or if you wish to die,” said the girl. 

“Well,” said Miss Grove briskly, “let us talk 
about more cheerful things, my dear.” 

“I think English people try very hard to be 
cheerful. ’ ’ 

“ It is their duty to be so, ’ ’ said the governess, who 
had smiled through many difficulties. 

“Is it?” 

“At present you are missing your father, to whom, 
I am sure, you are everything that a little girl ought 
to be.” 

“Yes, but, you see, I ought to have been a boy had 
not Heaven decreed otherwise. But my father be- 
came reconciled to me, I believe, very soon after I 
was born. Still, you can’t help wanting to be to him 
all that a pukka Hercules would have been, can you ? ’ ’ 

In this sensible Priory where Miss Grove was gov- 
erness she helped to administer a public-school educa- 
tion to girls, and she had watched with interest many 
excellent games of cricket and hockey played by her 
pupils in rough blue serge gymnasium dresses. She 
had often regretted that athletics do not always pro- 
duce gracefulness, and she had mourned sometimes 
over the faet that British honesty, as exemplified in 


30 Snow upon the Desert 

healthy maidenhood, is always admirable, but not al- 
ways attractive. 

“If I find you too masculine I will try and over- 
look it,” said Miss Grove gravely. Inwardly she was 
saying to herself that the only safe place for a piece 
of Dresden china is behind the glass doors of a cabi- 
net; but when the Dresden china in its frills and 
laces steps down from its perch and mingles with its 
far more serviceable and useful clay brethren, what 
is to be done to protect it? “Now we must put the 
skins away,” she said briskly, and the bootman, who 
had continued to hover near with a piece of string in 
his mouth, suggested that a few pieces of naphthalene 
would effectually prevent moth. 

“I think I must keep one skin out,” said Miss 
Lascelles, in her gentle authoritative way. 

1 1 It shall lie on the hearthrug in my sitting-room, ’ * 
said Miss Grove weakly, “and the rest must really 
be put back in the box.” 

“It shall be our wishing-carpet, ” said the girl. 
“You and I, Miss Grove, will put out the lights 
sometimes and sit on it together and wish ourselves 
miles away. ’ ’ 

“You are hound to be a little home-sick at first,” 
said Miss Grove with deliberate matter-of-factness 
and common sense, in order to check her pleasure in 
“you and I,” a phrase she had not heard for years. 

“I suppose when everything in you aches for those 


Snow upon the Desert 31 

you love, that is called being home-sick ?” said her 
pupil reflectively. 

“Yes, and we have all been through it.” 

“Dogs sometimes die of it,” said Hercules. “I 
wonder why we don’t?” 

She learned much at school, although experiencing 
some difficulty in taking seriously the lessons them- 
selves. “You must excuse my learning that,” she 
would say, “but it does not interest me at all. These 
rivers in China with their droll names and their 
‘basins’ — does their length matter to us until, per- 
haps, I go to visit them, and then I shall endeavor 
to make maps and drawings of them? I will learn 
these things if you wish it, hut I believe that that 
which does not interest one can never be learned 
except with much pain and difficulty. If I make 
faults, you will, I trust, he merciful and make some 
allowance for my ignorance. It would grieve me so 
much to make you unhappy over my lessons. ’ ’ 

In India she had learned an Oriental habit of 
bestowing gifts, and before she had been long at 
school she had parted with half her trinkets in pres- 
ents, until Miss Grove, discovering her one day press- 
ing a valuable ring upon a weeping schoolmate, had 
to check the habit with some grave words of reproof. 

“The ring is my own,” said Miss Lascelles. “The 
Maharajah of Kashmir gave it to me when I was a 
baby. I was at his birthday feast in Srinagar, and 


32 Snow upon the Desert 

I said some little rhymes to him which my ayah had 
taught me, and he gave me this.” 

“Your father would not like it,” protested Miss 
Grove. 

“But I have many others,” she replied indiffer- 
ently. “And a gift is consoling. In England you 
do not understand gifts.” 

It grieved her one day when she heard the girls 
break into irresistible giggles because the music master 
had dropped a violin-case on his toe. That had not 
seemed to her very amusing, for she had caught the 
gravity of the East with its inability to see the comic 
side of disaster. She had wanted to comfort the suf- 
ferer, but knew of no means of doing so except by 
the bestowal of a gift, which practice was disallowed. 
The music master limped a little when at last the 
lessons were over, and he went out to put on his great 
coat and muffler. She rose and followed him into the 
over-ventilated hall where coats and hats hung, and, 
taking his hand within her own to wish him good- 
bye, she pressed it with genuine sympathy, and, rais- 
ing her eyes to his, said, “Does it hurt much — the 
poor toe?” Some girls who saw the little incident 
enacted in the full light of day suggested among 
themselves that Miss Grove really ought to be told 
of it. No one likes telling tales, but duty is para- 
mount. 

Miss Grove could have wished sometimes that her 
honest-hearted pupils did not always feel the urgency 


33 


Snow upon the Desert 

of bringing difficulties to her; but discipline must be 
maintained, and instruction and reproof meted out 
where necessary. 

“No lady ever presses a gentleman’s hand,” said 
the governess. 

“Why is that?” asked her pupil, gravely intent 
upon learning the manners and customs of her native 
land. 

“It isn’t done,” replied Miss Grove firmly. 

“This time I am afraid it is done,” she said, with 
a rueful smile. 

“It must never be done again.” 

“Not even when he is hurt?” 

“Never, under any circumstances,” said the gov- 
erness. “It is very wrong. ’ ’ 

“I hope,” said Miss Lascelles politely, “that I have 
not transgressed the accepted moral code.” 

“What?” gasped Miss Grove. 

“In studying history and the classics with my 
father,” explained the patient pupil, “I was fre- 
quently puzzled, as he said many people are, by the 
difference between right and wrong. It seemed to me 
that heroes were sometimes mean, and criminals were 
often brave. Wicked people were also a puzzle to 
me, but my father said it would be sufficient if I 
understood that wrongdoing consisted in transgress- 
ing the accepted moral code.” 

“Oh, I see,” said Miss Grove. 


34 Snow upon the Desert 

“ Perhaps, then, it is not a great wickedness that 
I have done.” 

In the days of her youth Miss Grove had been 
wont to go for prim bicycle rides with a young man 
to whom she behaved with so much dignity and de- 
corum that his love was lost forever in the enormous 
respect he had for her. The recollection had two 
sides to it, one of virtuous self-approval and the 
other of human disappointment. 

“I hope I am not prudish,” she said, “but I think, 
my dear, that our instincts tell us that we should 
not in conversation with gentlemen speak without 
considerable reserve. Expressions of sympathy, ex- 
cept in cases of real illness, may lead to a great deal 
of harm.” 

“I will try to remember.” 

Miss Grove sighed ; there seemed to be many perils 
and dangers in front of her pupil, but it was diffi- 
cult to acquaint so clear a mind of them, or, indeed, 
to prove logically that sympathy itself must be 
guarded in its utterance. The governess and the 
human being, those widely dissociated personalities, 
were just then experiencing a sort of petty warfare 
between them, induced by the presence of a girl 
whose mind Miss Grove simply called untrained. The 
governess triumphed. She was always the better 
equipped of the two, and with a whole regiment of 
safe-conducts on her side and a faithful belief in 
the policy of “better not.” 


Snow upon the Desert 35 

“ Girls should be careful, ’ ’ she said. 

“One would be careful if one only knew when 
one was in danger !” sighed her young pupil. “My 
father and I depend upon his A.D.C. for everything. 
He is much more civilized than we are, and we send 
for him in every emergency, and he always puts 
things straight. I dare say he would know exactly 
how to treat a music teacher with a broken toe, just 
as he always knows the most complicated native titles, 
and what to put on their envelopes when you write 
to them, and how to address them. ,, 

“You will have to write and ask him about the 
music master/ ’ Miss Grove said. The twinkle which 
no governess ought to have in her eye appeared 
once more. 

“I write to him every day.” 

Miss Grove restrained herself. By holding quite 
firmly to the arms of her chair she was able to 
speak almost calmly. “You are only allowed to 
write letters on Sundays,” she said. 

“That is owing to some difficulty with the dak, 
I suppose,” Miss Lascelles said. “But I send my 
letters by the bootman. He is an honest man, al- 
though not above taking backsheesh.” 

“Good night,” said Miss Grove. She thought per- 
haps she ought to talk the matter over with the 
Principal. 


Chapter III 


M R. LIONEL JOHNSTON, f.r.g.s., being a per- 
sonal friend of our Principal, and withal a 
very young man not overburdened with invitations to 
speak in public, came to the Priory to give his lecture 
on glaciers. He was a square-shouldered young man 
with a black mustache, and the girls’ admiration of 
him was lavishly bestowed. Most of them were in 
love with him after the youthful schoolgirl fashion, 
which likes to proclaim its preference aloud. They 
called him interesting, handsome, or well-bred, ac- 
cording to their various capacities for admiration, 
and had fixed upon him those virtues to which they 
most ardently clung. We dislike silly flirtations at 
the Priory, and despise them in our downright, fresh- 
air way, and of Mr. Johnston we merely say, “We 
don’t mind what we do for him,” but we say it 
heroically, and it means a great deal. 

“Remember, my dear, attendance at this lecture is 
not optional,” said Miss Grove. “Miss Ainsworth 
would be very angry if you were not present.” 

The Priory is noted for its hygiene and its persist- 
ent draughts, which circle round corridors and stair- 
cases, and make for blue fingers, wholesome minds, 
36 


37 


Snow upon the Desert 

and many colds in the head. Microbes and bacilli 
find no welcome within its well-scmbbed schoolrooms 
and cubicles. Its classrooms are a perpetual sacrifice 
at the shrine of open-air treatment. The windows are 
never closed, the benches are bare, but to-day they 
are clothed with girlhood in every variety of form — 
a motley, well-washed, plainly dressed set of British 
girls. 

They bustled in with their notebooks and stylo- 
graphic pens, and they were early in their places 
and wore their best blouses, because Mr. Lionel Johns- 
ton, f.r.g.s., was the lecturer. 

“One may love a man, but one may not press 
his hand when he is in pain” — it was one of the 
puzzling lessons which the new pupil had to learn, 
and she blamed herself for being very stupid, because 
the contradictory rules puzzled no one but herself. 
She took a seat on the bench with the other school- 
girls who were making ready to begin their rapid 
writing by bending back their notebooks with a 
cracking sound of dry gum, and taking the tops off 
their stylographic pens with a cheerful pop. The 
lecturer appeared, and was accorded such a round of 
applause as is not, for instance, given to gray-haired 
professors. 

Our hands are large and red at the Priory, and 
when we clap them it is like the sound of boards 
beaten together. 

Mr. Johnston arranged his papers mechanically, 


38 Snow upon the Desert 

and dusted a blackboard which had no writing upon 
it with a delicate, refined movement. He appeared 
afraid of spoiling his conspicuous shirt-cuffs, and 
this masculine touch was warmly and sentimentally 
appreciated. He cleared his throat in a manner as 
nearly professional as possible, putting up his half- 
closed white hand to his mustache, while his eye 
traveled over the opening sentences of his lecture. 
Albeit, Mr. Johnston is not a drawing-room knight, 
even if he is a hero of the classroom. He loves snow- 
peaks as some men love their homes, and a clever girl 
earned the gratitude of the whole class last year 
when she voiced its sentiments in one pregnant sen- 
tence: “Mr. Johnston,” she said, “is polished, but 
that doesn’t prevent his being a real diamond.” 

He began by giving an interesting description of 
a journey he had made to Spitzbergen. Even Spitz- 
bergen is a tourist resort now, and steamer passen- 
gers have enjoyed and admired with suitable exclama- 
tions the marvelous color of the blue-green ice cliffs, 
or the majestic voyaging of icebergs floating rudder- 
less in a calm sea. Some love to speak of the birds 
which they have seen, or the trails of bear in the 
snow, or the speechless solitude of the plains. Mr. 
Johnston cared for none of these things. When he 
went to live in a small green Willesden canvas tent 
in some northern latitude he went to see glaciers. 
During the rest of the year he lived and worked in 


Snow upon the Desert 39 

lodgings in Battersea in order to gain enough money 
for his next expedition. 

His dreams centered round the formation of mo- 
raines ; their rough beds of ice and rubble were warm 
with his enthusiasms. But for this he could not have 
spoken in the Priory classroom to the schoolgirls who 
adored him. Still less could he have given his be- 
loved statistics and descriptions to an audience who 
were wholly incapable of understanding them. The 
girls bent over their books and took notes, and Mr. 
Johnston paused at intervals to allow them time to 
overtake his speech, or to emphasize some of his 
figures. He knew from experience what these notes 
would be like, and could anticipate the hopeless con- 
fusion into which the subject would be wrought. 
Still, he was lecturing about glaciers, and the sound 
of his own voice, with its refined accent, pleased him 
as he conjured up pictures of what he had seen. 

He paused to drink some water from a thick 
tumbler. When beginning a new paragraph it was 
his custom to do so, and he varied this method 
of pausing by clearing his throat, or modestly blowing 
his nose. 

“ Perhaps the most interesting discoveries of late 
years,” he said, “have been in Tibet.” In imagina- 
tion he was standing in the snows, axe in hand, and 
carving his next step in the ice above him. Here 
was a glacier which an intrepid English officer had 
discovered, and here again was a Pass, believed in- 


40 Snow upon the Desert 

accessible until its ascent was made last summer. ‘ ‘ It 
is men like the Duke of the Abruzzi, Younghusband, 
Longstaff, and Bethel, who are doing these things 
for us while we sit at home,” he said, with a certain 
ring in his voice, regret for the unattained and en- 
thusiasm for the attained showing itself in a fervor 
of speech of which he was hardly conscious. 

4 ‘This important peak,” he went on, pointing to a 
newly drawn map on the wall, “was only discovered 
the other day, and has been named by the discoverer 
Larki. I will give you the phonetic spelling,” said 
the lecturer, and repeated the name. “Have you all 
got that in your notebooks? — Larki.” 

“It is pronounced rather differently from that,” 
said a small voice. 

The lecturer smiled. “One of my audience,” he 
said, “seems to know more about the matter than 
I do.” He was jealous of his snow-peaks, but he 
delivered his little snub in a gentlemanly manner, 
and felt that he carried his audience with him. 

He had not before noticed the girl sitting close 
beside him on one of the front benches near the plat- 
form. 

“The a is pronounced almost like u in sulky. It 
is a little difficult to get the right sound at first.” 

The lecturer bit his mustache and paused. The 
interruption was unusual. 

“How did you happen to know about the peak at 
all ? ” he asked. 


Snow upon the Desert 41 

“It was named after me,” she said, “and means 
‘the Maiden.’ That is how I know.” 

“Captain Bethel discovered it,” Mr. Johnston went 
on, in a manner that aimed at being explanatory, 
while on the edge of it was the tone that invited in- 
struction. 

“This is very irregular,” said Miss Grove. 

“Still,” said the lecturer, “the circumstances are 
perhaps unusual; a young lady who has seen these 
snow-peaks might no doubt give us some interesting 
information about them.” 

“It is just as you like, of course, Mr. Johnston,” 
said Miss Grove. 

An enthusiast about glaciers, and one who had even 
the vaguest idea where K2 is, was a rare discovery 
in a girl’s school. Mr. Johnston gave her a little 
friendly smile which was intercepted by the whole 
class, and remarked, “He must have had some diffi- 
culty up there.” 

“It was the most dangerous of all his journeys,” 
said the voice from just below the platform, and 
looking down he was conscious of flushed cheeks, gray 
eyes and a straining eagerness, devoid of shyness. 

“May I say, sir, that your map of the glaciers is 
wrong?” 

“Indeed?” said Mr. Johnston. 

“This one fell to the south, then bent northward 
again, almost like the curve of an S. I can draw it 
for you if you will allow me.” 


42 Snow upon the Desert 

She rose from her seat and went to the wall on 
which the map was pinned, stretched out her hand 
with a simple imperiousness for the light cane which 
the speaker had been using, and, tracing with it the 
lines of the glacier, she went on as easily as though 
instructing a class of very small children whom she 
was accustomed to teach. “Just here, where these 
lines are wrong, it turns northward again. The peak 
west of K2 was another of Captain Bethel’s discov- 
eries, but, of course, he did not go as far as the 
Duke. It was this peak he named the Maiden.” 

* ‘ Thank you, my dear , 9 9 said Miss Grove nervously, 
“but I think that must do now. We must allow Mr. 
Johnston to finish his lecture.” 

“I beg your pardon,” she said, with the surprise 
of a fervent speaker who realizes suddenly that such 
a thing as an audience exists, “but this country is 
very interesting to me.” 

The lecturer was a geologist and an explorer first, 
and a lecturer afterwards. “Please let her go on. 
I would give anything I possess to have been there.” 

The stylographic pens were suspended in mid-air, 
and the lecture developed into an informal, eager 
discussion. 

“I went with them as far as the village myself,” 
said Miss Lascelles. “And then no one but the Swiss 
guides went on and Digby, and just northward of 
that — may I make a little pencil dot on the map ? — 
is where the worst mishap befell him. The snows 


43 


Snow upon the Desert 

were shifting then, and down in the valleys they had 
begun to melt altogether, and Digby found himself 
on a moving avalanche with his guides.’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I heard that story, ’ ’ exclaimed the lecturer, ‘ ‘ but 
it seemed to me hardly possible that it could be true. 
You have seen Captain Bethel. How did he escape 
certain death ? He seems to have been carried straight 
across the valley.’ ’ 

‘ ‘He said it felt as if the whole of the opposite 
side of it was racing toward him with the speed of 
an express train.” 

‘‘He was traveling with the avalanche, of course. 
Has he lectured about it at all? Do you know what 
happened? Was there nothing they could do?” 

Her amusement showed itself in a sudden burst 
of laughter such as a child gives. “They tried to 
stop it with their alpenstocks,” she said. 

“In a situation like that one might try to stop it 
with a pin? How far did they travel? One heard 
that he was carried to the other side.” 

“It is the little things,” she said, grave again, and 
with something of the weightiness of one who has 
looked upon strange scenes. “It is the little things 
that make the tragedies of such situations. They 
realized that they were alive, but they realized that 
they had lost their topees. The Swiss guides had to 
go back miles to try and find them. Fancy realizing 
that one was alive after an experience like that, and 


44 Snow upon the Desert 

yet saying, ‘Now I must die, because I have lost my 
hat!’ ” 

“One really knows nothing of these things !” he 
exclaimed, “unless one has been there. They were 
far out of their course, I gather?” 

“And two days without food,” she said. “That is 
pretty bad on the snows, you know, and walking all 
day.” 

‘ ‘ Still, it is worth it. ’ ’ 

“On the third day they came to a little Tibetan 
hut, belonging to a shepherd, and would you like 
to know what actually happened then? Instead of 
seizing any food they could lay hands on, Digby 
sat down and began bargaining for a sheep; it was 
force of habit, he said, and when the shepherd said 
four rupees he said two.” 

“Bravo!” 

“He was starving at the time.” 

“He is a brave man!” 

“All men are brave.” 

Miss Grove explained to Miss Ainsworth subse- 
quently that there had been an interesting debate 
at the conclusion of Mr. Johnston’s valuable paper 
on glaciers. 

“I have heard Captain Bethel speak at the Royal 
Geographical Society,” said the lecturer, “but I have 
never had the pleasure of meeting him.” 

“I will give you a letter of introduction if you 
will allow me; but you must come out and do some 


45 


Snow upon the Desert 

exploring yourself. Let us know what we can do for 
you, ’ ’ said the young lady in a manner divinely sim- 
ple hut superb. 

Round the fire after tea we voted that the lecture 
had been the weirdest that we had ever attended. 
A report got about that Miss Ainsworth had requested 
Miss Grove to send in her resignation. We divided 
our minds between that possibility and the other, and 
more likely, one, that the new scholar might be dis- 
missed. 

“I believe she will simply be sent for to Miss 
Ainsworth’s room and get talked at.” 

“ Behold Miss Hercules Lascelles in Miss Ains- 
worth ’s room, ’ ’ cries the mimic of the school. ‘ ‘ ‘ Dear 
Miss Ainsworth, I am so sorry to have interrupted 
your amiable lecturer. Do sit down! Pray take a 
chair! If you care about it, it will give me much 
pleasure to chaperon you to a ball next week!’ ” 

As a companion she was too full of surprises. The 
schoolgirl mind loves what it is accustomed to. We 
hardly knew what to make of a girl who read news- 
papers, openly wrote to London for books, and not 
only read them before they were inspected, but 
begged Miss Grove to supply herself from her store. 

Riding lessons were an ‘ 4 extra” at the Priory, and 
Miss Lascelles was advised to have them. When the 
horses came round and we had asked anxiously, 
“Does he kick? Is he a buck-jumper ! ” and had 
pulled down our habits and were leaving the school 


46 


Snow upon the Desert 

gates at a sober walk, we found that our fellow-pupil 
had jumped the first hedge in front of her, and was 
now sailing away across the open country. 

* ‘ It startles the other horses so ! ’ ’ we complained ; 
and when she found she was at fault, she rode back 
in her docile way and said, “I did not know anyone 
rode on the high road; it is bad for the horses’ feet, 
is it not?” 

The high walls of the school oppressed her, and 
she experienced some difficulty in knowing what was 
out of bounds and what was not. “The land is 
divided up into little plots,” she said, “each with 
a little wall or little hedge round it. Everything is 
little and only a bird can feel free. When I wish to 
think or to cure my heart from aching in a manner 
quite intolerable, I walk far into the country to be 
alone for a little while, and I find that it is a very 
wicked thing to do. Most things are wicked at school. 
It is very odd.” 

She was not happy, but we believed she would set- 
tle down in time. 

Discipline must be maintained at school, and Miss 
Ainsworth maintained it. One day she sent for 
Hercules and pointed out to her in her rather lengthy 
fashion the need for perfect punctuality and the ob- 
servance of rules. 

“But I ache with rules,” said the poor child, put- 
ting up her hand to her head, “and some of them 
seem to me so droll.” 


Snow upon the Desert 47 

The next day she took a piece of notepaper and 
wrote a letter to Miss Grove. 

“My dear,” the letter ran, “you have been an 
angel to me, and you must not think that I am 
leaving you without regret, but indeed it seems to 
me that school is not only a little dull, but rather 
vexing. I wish I knew how to avoid all the faults 
I constantly commit, but my poor head aches with 
trying to do so, and I fear I shall only give you a 
great deal of trouble if I stay. Besides this, will you 
forgive me for saying it? — I am not very happy, so 
I think it better to leave. Please try and rest your 
back sometimes, and do not read so many books. 

“With all my love, your faithful friend, 

“Hercules Lascelles.” 

Having finished her letter she wired very fully to 
Captain Bethel to say that as he was returning to 
India by the “Bolivia,” sailing from Marseilles next 
Friday, the 19th inst., she had decided to return 
by the same ship ; and instructed him to meet her 
in Paris and look after her. 

Life without an A.D.C. had become a complicated 
and difficult thing. If only she had had him with 
her at the Priory to consult, everything would not 
have gone wrong. Fortunately she had discovered 
in good time, when a change from her present sur- 
roundings became imperative, that he had not left 


48 Snow upon the Desert 

England. School had proved itself a failure, and 
her father had said that she was to come to him if she 
was unhappy. It seemed like a special act of a good 
Providence that his admirable and efficient assistant 
should be sailing for India in the “ Bolivia ” on the 
19th inst. 

Thus, in a reasonable, common sense, and happy 
frame of mind Miss Lascelles set out for Paris, in a 
dark green tartan dress trimmed with black lace, a 
small basket in her hand, and the rest of her luggage 
transferred by some magic power to the local railway 
station. 

Captain Bethel, having forgotten to say at which 
hotel he was stopping in London, never got the tele- 
gram, and it was the merest coincidence, or, as Miss 
Lascelles called it, the happiest chance, which di- 
rected her steps to the one where he was staying in 
Paris. She and her father and the invaluable A.D.C. 
had all put up at the same house on their way home. 
It was natural that she should do so again. 

“Digby,” said the young lady, coming up to him 
as he sat smoking in the palm-filled hall of the hotel, 
“I do not think I have been alive one hour since I 
said good-bye to you at Paddington . 9 9 

“You here, Herky?” said the young man, and 
repeated in hopeless bewilderment, “You here! 
Who’s with you?” 

“I am alone,” said Miss Lascelles. “I tried to 
stay at school, but it was impossible. I did not find 


40 


Snow upon the Desert 

it civilizing; I found it rather barbaric. I think my 
aunt cannot have known very much about civilization 
when she sent me there. ,, 

She sat down comfortably on a sofa, folded her 
hands, looked like a pink-and-white portrait of Rom- 
ney, and remarked with a sigh of satisfaction, “In 
a fortnight we shall be at home again.” 

Captain Digby Bethel did not sit down. He stood 
up and ruffled his hair from his forehead, while his 
face assumed an expression of lively distraction. ‘ 4 It 
is lovely seeing you again,” he remarked. “I was 
just wondering if your father meant you to travel 
without a chaperon, or anything. ’ ’ 

Miss Lascelles gave an enjoyable laugh. “I have 
never had anyone to chaperon me hut you !” she said. 

“I know, I know!” he cried, eagerly claiming his 
position as defender-in-chief, and with an inward 
determination to keep it at all hazards. “Still, you 
know when little girls do their hair up, and wear 
long frocks, sometimes it is different.” 

“It is not a bit different with me.” The Romney 
portrait fingers unfolded themselves, and with the 
air of a very friendly princess Miss Lascelles extended 
one small hand to her courtier. 

He allowed it to lie in his own large palm for a 
moment, and looked at it as though it was some 
wonderful thing. Whereupon, naturally, the young 
lady withdrew it. 


50 Snow upon the Desert 

“What I am wondering is,” said Captain Bethel, 
“whether at home it is not all quite different.” 

“I am so glad I am a savage,” Miss Lascelles re- 
plied. With a small contented movement she settled 
her chin in her neck, drew up her shoulders ever 
so slightly, and smiled delightedly. “I am so glad 
I am a savage, because then I never know about dif- 
ferences. You have always taken care of me, and 
why should you not continue to do so? The voyage 
only takes a fortnight, Digby,” she pleaded, and the 
princess became wistful — an extraordinarily strong 
position for a princess to assume — “and I promise 
to be good all the time ! ’ ’ 

4 ‘ My aunt is in Paris, ’ ’ said the young man eagerly. 
“You might go to her for to-night, and she is an 
awfully kind sort of woman. I believe she might 
come to Marseilles with us to-morrow, and put you 
on board the boat, and introduce you to some ladies, 
don’t you know?” 

“You are fussing a good deal, dear,” said the 
young lady with a little sigh. 

He remembered that she had not had tea, and, 
pressing a button set conveniently to hand in the 
white paneling of the hall, ordered two cups of choco- 
late, because the princess had become a schoolgirl 
again, and thought chocolate with cream on the top 
would be heavenly. He suggested presently that she 
must be tired, and that she might rest a little bit 
while he went out. Then, with some puzzled frowns 


51 


Snow upon the Desert 

smoothed out of his forehead, he took a taximeter 
and went to seek his aunt in the Avenue de Mon- 
taigne. 

His aunt was not at home. She had, indeed, only 
yesterday started for the South of Italy. 

“Now, God help us!” said Captain Dighy Bethel, 
scratching his head. “What ought I to do?” 

He found himself wondering whether this was an 
awkward situation or not. 

“I cannot put silly ideas into her head,” he said 
to himself, being a wholesome-minded young man 
and British. “Also I do not like her to be in a Paris 
hotel by herself; it would never do. I might tele- 
graph to her schoolmistress to come and fetch her 
back to school, but that would he playing it too low 
down. No, I can’t do that. She was miserable, and 
she has come to me and asked me to take her back 
to her father, and I must do it. There is nothing 
I wouldn’t do if she asked me; after all, I have 
always looked after her. The schoolmistress must 
think what she likes; she could not get here until 
to-morrow afternoon if I telegraphed to her at once, 
so that is no good. I suppose a beastly interfering 
world will want to know why she is traveling with 
me, and not with some lady. Of course, I might try 
to assume the role of the heavy father, or merely 
attempt to be the official A.D.C. taking charge of 
a girl as I would of a parcel. But then I am in love 
with her, and one day I am going to marry her, and 


52 Snow upon the Desert 

then ” The young man, having during these 

mental reflections been driven swiftly through the 
streets of Paris in a taximeter, now found himself 
at the door of the hotel, where he alighted and dis- 
covered the object of his guardianship sitting in the 
hall half-asleep under the palms, before he had found 
any clue to the solving of the perplexing problem. 

She rubbed her eyes in the manner which Captain 
Bethel believed to be unique, confessed to having 
been “quite dreadfully ill” on board the boat, and 
was sure she ought to go to bed early. They had 
dinner together at the big table d’hote, where this 
excellent young British protector of the fair sex was 
resentfully aware of the fact that their presence pro- 
voked comment. An elderly Frenchman sent for the 
head waiter and bade him find out who the pretty 
bride was, and the waiter addressed them as ‘ ‘ Mon- 
sieur” and “Madame.” 

“I advise you to go to bed early,” he said to her 
after dinner, still in a hopeless state of uncertainty 
what to do, and with a dismal sense that their neigh- 
bors at table d’hote were typical of that gossiping, 
wooden-headed thing called the world, which would 
peer and ask questions as these inquisitive, stupid 
people were doing now. 

“Brutes!” ejaculated the British protector under 
his breath. 

A beautiful woman passed quite close to them on 
her way to the door. She was alone, and had the 


Snow upon the Desert 53 

air of one to whom an escort would have been suit- 
able. 

“A fellow-passenger of ours,” said Miss Lascelles 
sagely, nodding her head at the young man opposite 
her. “Her luggage has the ship’s labels on all of it. 
Now, if you really want to share the dreadful duty 
of looking after me on board ship, we will ask her 
to be second in command.” 

1 ‘ 1 don ’t like the look of her, ’ ’ said the young man 
shortly. “And I’d rather you didn’t speak to her.” 

“And yet,” said Miss Lascelles, throwing up her 
hands and appealing to an imaginary audience, ‘ ‘ this 
man considers that he requires help in looking after 
me!” 

“It isn’t that,” he began eagerly. “But — you 
don’t understand; you can’t speak to everyone you 
meet at a Paris hotel. She didn ’t look to me the right 
sort of woman.” 

“You have become civilized, dear,” said the lady. 

‘ ‘ 1 know you think I ’m fussing, Herky, ’ ’ he began 
apologetically. 

“Fussing,” she replied, showing several dimples 
and appealing again to the imaginary audience. 
“He’s simply distracted, and the difficulty is to know 
what it ’s all about ! Digby, ’ ’ she said suddenly, her 
large eyes open and tears quite alarmingly near the 
brim, “you don’t mind my having come away from 
school, do you? You don’t think I’ve done anything 
wrong ? ’ ’ 


54 Snow upo7i the Desert 

“No, no; a thousand times, no,” he replied with 
vehemence. 

“I have waited to ask you this all to-day,” said 
she, recovering herself by the pathetic expedient of 
swallowing down a little sob which fluttered the white 
throat for a moment, ‘ ‘ because a very kind man who 
traveled in the same carriage with me from Calais 
seemed rather surprised that I should be traveling 
alone.” 

“I hope you did not talk to him,” said the good 
Briton severely. 

“I did not talk to him very much,” she replied, 

‘ ‘ because the man was deaf and the train was noisy ; 
besides, to tell you the truth, dear Digby, I was feel- 
ing a little sick. But he was most kind in looking 
after my luggage, and he got me some lunch. I 
do not know what I should have done without 
him.” 

“Well, anyway, you have got me now,” he replied 
truculently, “so, you see, you need not get any other 
fellow to look after you.” 

He said good night to her and went and sat in the 
smoking-room and considered the situation until a 
late hour. Then he allowed himself to get into a 
panic lest he should not be called in time the follow- 
ing morning ; wpndered if he ought to send telegrams 
anywhere, and, if so, to whom, and thought what a 
helpless being a man was on such occasions as this. 
He himself must positively sail by the ‘ ‘ Bolivia, ’ ’ hav- 


Snow upon the Desert 55 

ing only been allowed extension of leave in order to 
report on some of his explorations. Also he could not 
leave her in Paris. Finally, who was better able to 
look after her than he was ? The only trouble seemed 
to lie in the fact that she was so pretty and he so 
fond ; and these two difficulties were, thank God, not 
insurmountable. There seemed nothing for it but to go 
on, and he would wire to his chief to expect them 
both. 

In the morning Miss Lascelles was very late, and 
her responsible and now somewhat care-ridden com- 
panion ate his breakfast in company with a plain 
woman, not very young, with an immense row of false 
teeth, who sat opposite him and made such distant 
and isolated remarks as are deemed suitable conversa- 
tion for an hotel acquaintance. “Your wife looked 
very tired last night/ ’ said the lady, to which Cap- 
tain Bethel replied absently that he supposed she 
was a little, as she had traveled from England that 
day. 

“You came the day before / 9 remarked the elderly 
person, and the young man told himself that she 
was probably a Scot, with a Scot’s inherited legal 
turn of mind and passion for exact statements. 

She finished a herring (not equal to Loch Fyne), 
chose bacon and eggs by pointing to the menu with a 
fat, pink forefinger, and remarked: 

“She is late.” 


56 


Snow upon the Desert 

* ‘She is very late,” said the young man distract- 
edly. “I don't believe they gave her my message. I 
had better go myself,” and he left the room. 

“There’s something queer about this,” said Mrs. 
Mackenzie. 


Chapter IV 


M RS. MACKENZIE was as well known on the 
Peninsular and Oriental Line of steamers be- 
tween London and Bombay as the vessels themselves. 
Some of the captains had made the voyage less often 
than had Mrs. Mackenzie. The white-painted interior 
of a small cabin with its narrow bunks was home to 
her. She knew the best position of each one of 
them, and without even glancing at the plan of a ship 
she was able to write to the Agency in Northumber- 
land Avenue and request that 114 on the port side 
should be kept for her on the outward voyage, and 
97 on the starboard side coming home. Her cabin 
trunk had borne every sort of climate just as she her- 
self had borne it. Both had got rather weatherbeaten 
and out of shape in the process, and both looked 
toughened by hard usage. Her hold-all could prob- 
ably have found its way to any port in the East with- 
out direction. 

Nothing tired Mrs. Mackenzie except stopping at 
home. She grew fat on indifferent food, and, while 
complaining, for conscience sake, about the quality of 
every meal that was served on board ship, she never 
failed to do justice to each one that was placed before 
57 


58 Snow upon the Desert 

her. The head steward always gave her a seat at the 
captain’s table; the purser never filled the second 
bunk in her cabin if he could avoid it — he knew bet- 
ter than to do so. By simply voyaging frequently 
between London and Bombay Mrs. Mackenzie had 
become an institution, and was respected as such. 

But her tongue no man could tame. She had a 
cult for truth which jesting Pilate himself could 
hardly have surpassed, and truth, according to Mrs. 
Mackenzie, meant turning the relentless searchlight 
of investigation into the darkest and most obscure 
corners of the lives of everyone whom she met. Was 
there hereditary madness in a family, the doors of 
an asylum itself were powerless against the Rontgen 
rays of Mrs. Mackenzie’s eyes. Had an irregular 
marriage taken place, no genealogical maniac and 
searcher of registers ever put his finger more un- 
falteringly on the defect than did this stout keeper of 
men’s consciences. No past, however decently buried, 
but was snatched from its grave by her. She knew 
the lineal defects of every family in Scotland, and of 
most of those in England. She was seldom at fault 
in her inexhaustible information; she did not even 
exaggerate or make guesses. Mrs. Mackenzie simply 
required truth, and when she asked for it she meant 
to have it. 

Probably she knew that she inspired terror in faint 
hearts, and took a grim pleasure in the knowledge. 
Conscience makes cowards of us all, and it was part 


Snow upon the Desert 59 

of Mrs. Mackenzie’s relentless creed that the terror 
thus inspired was only a just retribution for ill-doing. 
Providence might slumber in these matters; Mrs. 
Mackenzie never did. 

She w T as never seasick. This gave her a consider- 
able advantage over most other voyagers, and she 
was able to see them all w T ith, to use a popular phrase, 
‘ ‘ their masks off ” in the pathetic weakness which the 
heaving of the ocean induces in mankind. She 
studied passenger lists, and revived her memory about 
this person and about that before quitting the shore, 
and was ready armed with information concerning all 
and sundry on board the ship before general conval- 
escence had set in. She was a keen observer, and 
had raked India with the telescope of scrupulous ve- 
racity for thirty years; and in her ocean home she 
enjoyed humanity and its many interesting misdeeds 
with a zest which neither time nor custom could 
impair. 

Mrs. Antrobus was her favorite and her most in- 
exhaustible theme. With Mrs. Antrobus on board 
ship there were bound to he developments. “I sup- 
pose it will be Major Eden this time,” she said to her- 
self with a lively sense of pleasure to come. “1 hear 
he was philandering about with her at home.” It was 
unlikely that the rest of the ship’s company could 
afford much distraction. The captain was foolish in 
a paternal sort of way about girls sometimes, and 
overdid his guardianship of them in the matter of 


60 


Snow upon the Desert 

tucking up cold feet as he strolled in dazzling white 
shoes past the extended figures in deck-chairs. But 
the captain was the finest navigator in the P. and 0. 
Line. He might stroll up and down the decks with 
an air of detachment, as though he were less con- 
cerned in the ‘ 1 Bolivia V ’ welfare than any of the 
passengers on board the ship, but on the bridge, and 
in dirty weather, he was known to he the hardest 
swearing man in the company. This habit engenders 
a feeling of safety in the female mind, and whether 
at sea or on shore they seek such to voyage with, es- 
pecially when there is danger ahead. 

During meal-times Mrs. Mackenzie had more than 
once on former voyages intercepted soft glances sent 
down the table by the man with the iron-gray hair 
and the weather-beaten face who sat at its head. 
But Captain Baird was merely sentimentally careful 
of attractive young women, whose weddings he fre- 
quently attended on their arrival at Bombay, when 
the precious freight was consigned to its rightful 
owner. There was a sameness about his windly pa- 
ternal flirtations, and he was not of much use to Mrs. 
Mackenzie. 

Humanity was an open book to her ; or if by chance 
she found the volume shut, she had no scruples what- 
ever about turning the reluctant pages. 

“Do you mean to say,” said a lady to whom the 
searcher of hearts and of parish registers had com- 
mitted her views on the strange young couple who 


61 


Snow upon the Desert 

were their fellow passengers, “that she is pretending 
to be seasick in order not to see anyone ? ’ 9 Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie thought that was possible, hut did not commit 
herself. “I’ll bide my time,” she said, for she often 
assumed a racy vernacular in order to find justifica- 
tion for her rather pronounced Scottish accent. 

It was a windy night, although not blowing a gale. 
Most of the passengers on hoard the still heaving 
‘ ‘ Bolivia ’ ’ found it too cold to remain on deck, except 
those valiant ones who, with tweed caps pressed firmly 
down and greatcoats on, squeezed themselves through 
the companion doorway before it hanged behind them 
with a rattle of brass locks, while red sparks flew 
from lighted cigars, and sheltered corners were found 
wherein to smoke and to hope for warmer weather. 
There were heaped-up piles of deck chairs under the 
awnings, waiting for identification and the quarter- 
master’s releasing knife, when more clement days 
should come, and only a small group of brave ladies, 
having finished dinner at tables where still there were 
many empty places, had seated themselves in the 
music room. These still wore the distress in their 
faces which comes from leaving home and saying 
good-bye to friends. They had brought fancy work 
with them and knitting, and were beguiling the 
tedium of a long evening with the tentative, if 
friendly, conversation which inspires travelers who 
do not wish to be committed, even on a fortnight’s 


62 


Snow upon the Desert 

voyaging, to the companionship of those who will af- 
ford them neither entertainment nor advantage. 

“It it’s a runaway match,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, 
whose accent lent itself to plain speaking, “I know 
that she is not wearing a wedding ring, for I particu- 
larly asked the stewardess.” 

1 ‘ Conventions have altered so much, ’ ’ said a widow 
lady with cambric cuffs of dazzling whiteness, who 
was turning the heel of a sock. “In India, espe- 
cially, one knows of cases where it really is necessary 
for a girl’s safety to be put in charge of a gentle- 
man.” 

“But not in Paris,” said the observer, with her 
usual brevity, and a faint suggestion of clicking her 
tongue. 

“I shall certainly not know her when she does ap- 
pear,” said a good spinster who had been careful all 
her life. 

Mrs. Antrobus came in from the cold outside with 
a pink chiffon scarf round her head and smoking a 
cigarette. Two gentlemen followed her. 

Mrs. Antrobus was never seen without gentlemen 
in attendance; some women were broad-minded 
enough to be civil to her in spite of this. Those who 
had known her long always spoke of her as a woman 
who had been beautiful, remembering the dazzling 
vision of young womanhood that had appeared in 
India thirteen years ago. Those who had but lately 
met her alluded to her still as a beautiful woman. 


63 


Snow upon the Desert 

She was probably not much over thirty years old, but 
a certain tragedy in her face more than confirmed the 
number of her years. Her dark brown hair stood 
up high on her forehead in strong waves which sug- 
gested that the several hairs must be electrified, so 
virile and thick was the growth, while on the left 
temple was one large tuft of white which gave to the 
beautiful face an air of distinction not unmixed with 
a certain well-bred rakishness. She was always beau- 
tifully dressed, always gay and amusing, and she 
went about everywhere with men, and was seldom 
seen with her husband. 

“I’ll bet you anything you like,” said one of her 
companions, lowering his voice and speaking confi- 
dentially, “that those old ladies are discussing the 
girl with whom Bethel is traveling.” 

“His sister, probably,” said the other man indif- 
ferently, and added with a sort of good-natured cyni- 
cism: “How disappointed they’ll be when they find 
out who she is. ’ ’ 

“I wish shipboard gossip amused me,” said Mrs. 
Antrobus, ‘ ‘ but I generally find that everyone is dar- 
ingly respectable and generally a little dull, yet I 
suppose if one is Mrs. Mackenzie one continues to live 
in hopes of buried treasure in the way of scandal. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ She ’s an amazingly pretty girl, ’ ’ the man ’s voice 
went on. “I pointed her out to you at Marseilles.” 

“That girl f” exclaimed Mrs. Antrobus. “I re- 
member her now ; she was at Paris. Has no one seen 


64 Snow upon the Desert 

her since we came on board? Why, she was a mere 
baby.” 

“She is probably in the hands of the stewardess 
down below, poor child,” the man said, “while the 
good little cherub who sits up in the music room is 
taking care of her character.” 

Mrs. Antrobus rose from her seat and descended 
the companion staircase. It was a fine night and the 
recent swell was settling down to calm. The alley- 
ways were filled with the throb of the engines and 
electric lights glared on the white paint. 

Mrs. Antrobus knocked at a cabin door, apologized 
to the curtain which hung across it for the bad word 
she had used when it hit her in the face, and then 
said , 1 1 Do tell me if you hate people coming to see you 
when you are ill.” 

Miss Lascelles lay in the small amount of space 
which a beneficent company allows its passengers in 
return for a considerable fare. She looked very small 
and thin, and her eyes had black shadows beneath 
them. A half-finished cup of arrowroot on a camp 
stool beside her bunk was sufficient testimony that 
she had not had much appetite of late. 

“I’ve had a dreadful time,” she said with the 
self-pity which is allowable in a seasick passenger. 

“Have they been looking after you properly?” 
asked Mrs. Antrobus. 

“The stewardess is very proud of me,” the invalid 
said, with an heroic attempt at a smile, “because she 


65 


Snow upon the Desert 

says I am much iller than anyone else on board. How 
beautiful you look in black.” 

Mrs. Antrobus drew up a second camp stool and 
sat down in the full glare of the electric light. Her 
beauty was of the type that can welcome strong light. 
The shadows which the brilliant globe cast served to 
accentuate the admirable lines of her face. The fine 
drawing in the nose and eyelids and ears was brought 
out prominently as in a pen-and-ink sketch. Seen in 
the broad light of day, the brilliance of her coloring 
made a picture whose excellence no one doubted, but 
the strong shadows of the electric light proclaimed 
that the modeling of the throat and the well-cut jaw 
was nearly faultless. Her hair, which grew with a 
spring from her forehead, served to increase her 
height; her movements were those of a perfectly 
healthy woman, whose feet and hands, the poise of her 
head and shoulders, are fashioned after a pattern 
such as a sculptor ’s chisel loves to model. She never 
went anywhere without exciting prejudice. Perhaps 
her beauty caused envy. Perhaps it was the fact that 
admiration seemed to be her natural heritage, or it 
may have been simply because the wife of Jack An- 
trobus must inevitably share in his condemnation. 

4 ‘ Will you be able to get up to-morrow?” she said, 
settling the seasick passenger ’s flat pillows. Mrs. An- 
trobus ’s touch had something magnetic in it; she 
brought a sense of living with her which was infec- 
tious. The bright, clear color under her skin, the 


66 Snow upon the Desert 

strong-growing hair, her hands not very small, but 
with strong wrists and shapely thumbs, all bespoke 
a sort of splendor of youth, and hope, and strength. 
Only the patch of white hair on her forehead was 
inappropriate as a tag of crape in a bridal bouquet. 

“Do try to get up to-morrow and come on deck,” 
she repeated. “We will have a deck chair prepared 
for you, and the air will do you good. ’ ’ 

“I have been feeling pretty miserable,’ ’ said 
Herky, with a nod of her head, “and I do not think 
it has been altogether the seasickness.” 

“A voyage may be the most wretched thing on 
earth! One never feels so lonely as when one is at 
sea!” said Mrs. Antrohus. 

“Have you ever made a fearful mistake in your 
life?” said the lady in the bunk suddenly. 

“Hundreds!” said Mrs. Antrohus. 

“I made one tremendous one,” the plaintive voice 
went on, ‘ ‘ but it was not really my own mistake. ’ ’ 

“It is never really our own mistake,” said Mrs. 
Antrohus. 

‘ ‘ It was partly my aunt ’s. I went to school. ’ ’ 

“And you have run away?” 

“Yes.” 

“School was impossible, besides being cold beyond 
expression, ’ ’ said Miss Lascelles, ‘ ‘ and in spite of an 
adorable Miss Grove who was there. I wrote to Miss 
Grove before I left, hut I told the bootman not to give 
the letter to her till long after I had started, other- 


67 


Snow upon the Desert 

wise she might have detained me. I do not like 
cricket and hockey at all, nor could I learn the many 
rules which school directors seem to think necessary 
for one’s welfare. I broke them far too often/’ she 
concluded regretfully, “and I do not even think that 
my education prospered. School was a terrible mis- 
take.” 

“So you ran away,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“I ran to Paris and to my dearest friend.” 

‘ * It was not very wise, ’ ’ faltered Mrs. Antrobus. 

“That is what Digby said,” assented the girl with 
a smile. “Still, if you have only one friend in the 
whole world you naturally go to him.” 

“That one friend! We want him so badly some- 
times!” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

‘ ‘ I never wanted anyone more, ’ ’ said Miss Lascelles. 

Mrs. Antrobus recommended the invalid fresh air 
on the morrow, and then rose to go. “I do not even 
know your name yet,” she said, “but I am sure we 
are going to be friends.” 

Miss Lascelles gave her name with a confirmatory 
glance at a luggage label which dangled from the 
rack over her head. 

Mrs. Antrobus looked at the label and then said, 
“Once your father was very good to me; my name 
is Bertha Antrobus.” 

Hercules Lascelles leaned forward out of the bunk 
and kissed her. She had always remembered her as 
one who must not be left alone. Moved by some un- 


68 


Snow upon the Desert 

comprehended sense of compassion, she laid her hand 
in the hand of the woman beside her. 

Mrs. Antrobus rose from her seat and said quickly, 
“You must get well soon, Herky; little girls are 
meant to enjoy themselves, not to be ill.” 

“Isn’t it odd to know that one has been perfectly 
happy for eighteen years, and then to find out that 
it’s possible to he unhappy?” 

“It comes at eighteen sometimes,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus, “and sometimes it comes earlier, sometimes 
later. It always comes.” 

“But it will be all quite right when we have got 
out to India,” concluded the invalid hopefully, “for 
there at least one is not confronted with the moral 
code. ’ ’ 

“Now, that is the sort of remark little girls are 
always making, ’ ’ said Mrs. Antrobus to herself, 1 1 and 
then people think they are grown up.” Aloud she 
said, “There are many Indias, ” and stooped to say 
good-night. Then she exclaimed impulsively, “Will 
you do something for me? You know we are old 
friends, even if you cannot remember me. Will you, 
when you are on deck among all these people, say 
that you are traveling with me, and that you are 
under my care?” 

Miss Lascelles smiled triumphantly. “It is just 
what I suggested to Digby at the Paris hotel,” she 
remarked. 

“I think I know why Digby did not wish it,” said 


69 


Snow upon the Desert 

Mrs. Antrobus, interrupting her. “Only I am per- 
haps better than nothing, and I won’t cling about 
you and be a bother to you afterwards, if everything 
goes right. Don’t say anything about having run 
away from school. I mean,” she said in an explan- 
atory manner, “on board ship people sometimes seem 
inclined to think that everyone’s business is their 
own.” 

“They are civilized,” said Hercules with a sigh. 
“One must not judge them too harshly.” 

“No, don’t judge us too harshly,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus gravely, “don’t judge any of us too harshly.” 

The seasick passenger put out her small hand be- 
yond the confining side plank of the bunk and said 
earnestly, 1 1 Let me be kind to you ! Miss Grove tells 
me that one must never be kind to men. But no one 
could object to my loving you. You are very good 
to me, and you are so beautiful. ’ ’ 

“Lascelles is her name, and she really has run 
away from school,” said Mrs. Antrobus when she 
joined Major Eden on deck, and walked up and down 
with him till the lights went out. ‘ ‘ It was a childish 
adventure. One must do what one can to protect her 
if people say foolish things about her.” 

“Probably she and Bethel will marry in time,” 
said Major Eden, “and if there has been gossip they 
will live it down as other people have done before.” 

In the dark he could hear the faint sound of tears 
in her voice. “Ah, Philip!” she said, “a woman is 


70 Snow upon the Desert 

too light a thing to trample the world without feeling 
its sting. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ I wish I had it under my heel, ’ ’ he said savagely. 

It was too dark now to see anything, but she was 
conscious of his movements, and heard the harsh 
sound of his heel grinding on the wood of the deck. 

“ I have told her that she and I must be traveling 
together,” Mrs. Antrobus went on. “When I get to 
know her better I can advise her what to do. It is 
rather a ridiculous little affair.” 

“There was never anyone so adorably kind as you 
are!” he said. 

“I wish she had a better friend,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus. 

The next day she helped the invalid to come on 
deck, and she put pillows behind her and a plaid 
round her feet. Behind her came Captain Bethel 
with offers of an extra rug and various remedies for 
seasickness. 

The young lady had appeared in a little hood be- 
yond whose rim some curls peeped enchantingly. “I 
cannot take off my hood,” she cried, “for I have not 
done my hair yet! The stewardess could not do it 
because her fingers were all thumbs, she said, and I 
could not do it because,” with a lugubrious shake of 
the head, “I felt much too ill, but an angelic woman 
in the cabin next to mine lent me her little girl’s bon- 
net.” 

Her silky curls clustered about her neck, and made 


Snow upon the Desert 71 

a bright mass of color in the blue silk lining of the 
little coif that she wore. 

“I always told you,” said Digby, in a tone both 
proprietary and masterful, “that I did not want the 
curls tucked up. It seems to me much more natural 
to see you with your hair bobbing about on your 
shoulders. ’ ’ 

“If I am to be chaperon,” was Mrs. Antrobus’s 
inward comment, ‘ 1 1 draw the line at his making love 
to her under my nose.” She sent him away on an 
errand and took the vacant chair beside her new 
friend. 

“My dear,” she said in her unexpected way, “have 
you ever seen anyone who looked exactly like a kind 
ham?” 

It was a trick of hers, which many people resented, 
to address anyone and everyone as “my dear.” It 
meant nothing, and was probably a mannerism caught 
from the ma chere of a French convent; in England 
ornaments of language are not permissible. If we 
use an endearing term it must be used toward the 
person qualified to receive such terms, and it must 
be used intentionally and with responsibility. Mrs. 
Antrobus was never responsible, and seldom spoke 
with intention. When it was pointed out to her that 
she called most people “my dear,” she laughed and 
said, “And half of them do not deserve it.” 

“The name of my ham is Belt. Why Belt, I won- 


72 


Snow upon the Desert 

der? Is it a little joke about his figure, and have 
all the family of Belts incompassable waists ?” 

The girl in the little blue silk hood leaned forward 
suddenly in her chair and exclaimed, “But that is 
my admirer! I never had an admirer before, but I 
am quite certain that he loves me very much.” 

“But, my dear ” 

“We made friends in the train,” said Hercules, 
* 1 and before we parted we knew all about each other. 
He is a little deaf, poor man, but otherwise a most 
humane person.” 

‘ ‘ I long to put a paper frill round his neck. ’ ’ 

“I believe it would make him look kinder than 
even! But his good deeds to me were incalculable. 
You see, I might have had to look through Paris for 
Digby ; for, of course, it was a little doubtful whether 
he got my telegram or not, and this dear man bade 
me apply to him if I were in trouble, and gave me 
his address at an hotel.” 

‘ ‘ Meurice ’s, no doubt ! He is a city magnate, and 
his wealth is colossal.” 

“And, indeed, he is generous with it!” said the 
lady of the curls warmly. “He not only got me 
lunch, but refused to let me pay for it, and he gave 
me a very charming novel besides.” 

Like an antiphony, Mrs. Antrobus took up and 
chanted the darker side of the man’s character. 

“He buys historical houses, and has the stones 
numbered and placed where he lives at Woking or 


73 


Snow upon the Desert 

Harrow. He drains ruins and lives in them, and 
when you find that picturesque London has disap- 
peared you will he able to trace the Marble Arch and 
the Jerusalem Chamber to various twenty-acre prop- 
erties in Surrey.’ ’ 

“He sent little gifts to the cabin by the hand of 
the stewardess when I was ill,” said the object of his 
attentions, in gratitude urging that the man who 
drained ruins might yet be good and kind. 

“Why are old gentlemen so reckless?” said Mrs. 
Antrobus. 

“The gifts took the form of tabloids,” explained 
the young lady. 

‘ ‘ Our most tender love-tokens nowadays, ’ ’ laughed 
Mrs. Antrobus, “are packets of patent food, bottles 
of Yanitas, or tins of Sanatogen. We are so careful 
of our health that we express our affection in pills 
and plasters.” 

“The stewardess,” said Herky, “seemed to believe 
that it must do me good to hear that this excellent 
stranger whom she called ‘my old gentleman’ had 
been asking how I was.” 

“The lower classes are still very primitive.” 

Mr. Belt was a brilliant financier and a simple man. 
His genius consisted in figures, and he had a touch 
for gold which was irresistible. Among goldmakers 
he was the king of alchemists. Among the rest of 
mankind his weakness was his best quality, being fun- 
damentally associated with his kindness of heart. It 


74 Snow upon the Desert 

showed itself in a passion for rescuing fair ladies, 
and the practice was not unattended by grave dan- 
gers and difficulties. Not even his unattractive ap- 
pearance, his rotund figure, and the length of his 
purse could always save him from frequent and seri- 
ous disaster. Knightly Mr. Belt! His admiration 
for those whom he always called the fair sex remained 
unshaken, and he continued with elderly chivalry to 
rescue ladies from distress, with an incurable belief 
in its genuineness. 

He was a bewildered man, and spent much in- 
genuity in trying to conceal from his daughters the 
paragraphs in newspapers which portrayed, but never 
explained, the awkward situations in which he found 
himself. 

Mr. Belt was in one of his usual periodical diffi- 
culties. As a matter of fact, he was utilizing this 
winter trip to India as a means of getting out of a 
situation more than ordinarily acute. Lately, men 
had taken to chaffing him on the Stock Exchange — 
chaffing him about these terrible and unavoidable 
situations into which he seemed constantly to be 
thrust, and he had thought it better to get away for 
a while. The last good story against him had been 
too amusing according to the Stock Exchange, too 
hideous according to Mr. Belt, to be faced even with 
the martyr ’s courage which he usually brought to 
bear upon his own unjust and horrible ill fortune. 
He had been coming home in the Tube from the City 


75 


Snow upon the Desert 

one evening in the dark weather, and there had en- 
tered from the rain outside a good-looking young 
woman, heavily encumbered with a baby. Mr. Belt 
gave up his seat to her — he was in the habit of making 
these sacrifices — and as he hung for a few minutes 
by the strap from the roof he swayed against the 
young mother and begged her pardon. From that it 
was a small and easy transit toward the fatuous re- 
mark that the baby was a fine child. When the train 
slowed down at the next station, “ ’old ’im for a 
minute,” said the young mother — or she may have 
been a long-suffering aunt — and thrust the baby into 
Mr. Belt’s arms. There he stood, waiting for her 
return until the gates of the train closed with a clang, 
and Mr. Belt made a headlong passage toward escape 
on to the platform. But already the train was in 
swift motion. One or two people were sympathetic; 
one or two had begun to smile. 

4 ‘What am I to do with it? What am I to do with 
it?” cried Mr. Belt, and a junior member of the 
Stock Exchange, who was a wag and a caricaturist 
as well, had a spirited little picture to show his friends 
the next morning, giving an unmistakable portrait 
of Mr. Belt, and entitled, “What am I to do with it?” 

Mr. Belt ’s name was Matthew, and his second name 
was Lawson. He was in the habit of signing himself 
Matthew L. Belt. Everyone now knew that he had 
been christened Louis, or, if they did not know it, the 
little pun was sufficiently tempting to establish that 


76 Snow upon the Desert 

information beyond a doubt. Mr. Belt began to be 
popularly known as the “Loose Belt,” and, from the 
very fact that no name ever suited a man less, it stuck 
to him. 

It was shortly after discovering what his nickname 
was that Mr. Belt had decided upon making a little 
winter trip to India. 

Mrs. Mackenzie always took a little exercise before 
lunchtime. Until twelve o’clock she sat and knitted, 
with a tartan plaid about her knees, when, rising, she 
would make a little tour of the deck, stopping to 
speak to different friends; then she continued her 
limited walk, sometimes extending it as far as the 
second-class deck, and explaining to everyone in 
repudiation of any desire for their company that she 
was obliged to move about sometimes, for she got 
“that stiff sitting.” 

She was one of those rare souls who are able to 
go through the world alone. Not even a promenade 
in front of a line of deck chairs and without a com- 
panion disturbed her. More sensitive folk might feel 
that their boots creaked with disturbing loudness on 
a solitary tramp, or that their hats, their veils, their 
hair were conspicuously imperfect. They might even 
cling to the rigging sometimes, turning their backs 
on the world and looking seaward with an overdone 
pretense of interest. Mrs. Mackenzie was not a prey 
to such lamentable self-consciousness. She was prob- 
ably the most sensible woman who had ever trodden 


77 


Snow upon the Desert 

the deck of a ship. A disinclination for her com- 
pany was not observed by her; her knitting and her 
deck chair were ubiquitous. 

“Better?” she said. 

“Much better, thank you,” said Herky. 

“You have more color in your cheeks.” Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie sat down heavily on a chair, having drawn it 
forward with a creaking sound over the deck. “I 
saw you in Paris,” she said, and took a long, search- 
ing look at her victim. 

“At the hotel?” 

“Yes, at the hotel.” 

“We ought really to he going down to lunch,” 
interposed Mrs. Antrobus. 

“The captain was saying that you are a daughter 
of Sir Hercules Lascelles,” pursued the inquisitor. 

“I am, indeed.” 

Mrs. Mackenzie pounced. “Whom are you travel- 
ing with ? ’ 9 she said. 

“She is traveling with me,” said Mrs. Antrobus 
quickly. 

“So that is to he the story,” thought Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie. “But Mrs. Antrobus need not pretend to me 
that they are old friends. She did not know them in 
Paris, where Captain Bethel acknowledged to me 
that the girl was his wife.” 

“Did you know Mr. Belt before?” 

“Not until I met him in the train.” 


78 Snow upon the Desert 

“You will need to be careful of him. He is just 
an Oriental in disguise.” 

“My father used to try to explain to me what an 
Oriental mind was, ’ ’ said the young lady, who was at 
ease even under Mrs. Mackenzie’s microscope. “I 
understood from him that it had much to do with 
lordship. The Purdah ladies, he said, have a very 
strong feeling of reverence for men, hut I gathered 
from him that in England I should find the position 
reversed. Sometimes I think I never knew the Ori- 
ental mind until I came to England. And at school 
I found that even the mathematical master was some- 
thing of a king.” 

* ‘ That was very nice for the mathematical master , 9 9 
said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“My girl friends, it appeared to me, did not ex- 
pect worship. Once I heard a man being a little 
rude to one of them, and she laughed. I think it 
would be better to have an Oriental husband, and get 
him to kill the man who had been rude.” 

Mrs. Antrobus said quite slowly and without feel- 
ing, “One would have to be quite certain, of course, 
that one’s lord and master resented the rudeness.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, “I think it is high 
time we went down to lunch.” 


Chapter V 


VOYAGE may sometimes seem like a pleasure 



snatched from some withholding and jealous 
power. So quiet does the time seem, so free from 
happenings and decisions and encounters, that the 
holiday may have about it a sense almost of a stolen 
joy. Travelers on life’s rough way, with a sort of 
preparedness for its discomforts, and an obstinate 
belief in its manifold ills, have learned to expect the 
fret of life and to look for it; they know the feel of 
its hard corners as they graze sharply upon them. 
Almost the old worries have become dear! Freedom 
from care, like everything else, is a thing to which 
they have to grow accustomed. They may have put 
a nail under their shirts of their own free will, or 
they may have had it put there for them. The fact 
remains that they miss it when it is gone. 

The sea was calm, with hardly a ripple upon it ; the 
sound of the engines, with their solemn, relentless 
beats, had no sense of hurry in them; even the ship 
seemed to move leisurely, and it was absurd to pre- 
tend that she traveled at the rate of eighteen knots 
an hour. The fact that no scrupulous time had to 
be kept for a meal became almost irksome in its sug- 


79 


80 


Snow upon the Desert 

gestion of liberty; and men and women still dressed 
for dinner punctually on the stroke of seven, and ap- 
peared in the saloon at seven-thirty as though in a 
hurry to catch a departing train. The ship’s bells, 
with their monotonous strokes, fixed the days in a 
sort of routine. The calculating mind is hard to get 
rid of, and if we pace the deck before dinner we must 
count our tramps up and down the length of it, and 
estimate that so many times round it means a mile of 
exercise. We must know the speed of the ship’s run, 
we must be called in time in the morning. The im- 
petus of past busy days carries us far across the 
ocean. Drifting is a forgotten art, and to rest on 
one’s oars is very dull. 

In the shadow of the ship, flying-fish shook out 
silver spray from their fins, and a school of porpoises 
to starboard churned up the oily surface of the water 
with their wheel-like movements. Sea and sun met 
each other on the limitless horizon, and in the great 
space of it and its eternal peace an everlasting life 
seemed to have begun. 

Mrs. Mackenzie, who dealt in scrupulous minutes 
and who liked beginning her worsted work at the 
same time every morning, was meanwhile informing 
the deck steward that she thought his watch must be 
wrong, and wished that the beef tea might be brought 
more punctually at eleven o’clock. And an industri- 
ous writer of newspaper paragraphs in search of 
copy was getting through his two thousand words 


81 


Snow upon the Desert 

per day before he allowed himself to look at the sea. 

“I almost wish,” said Mrs. Antrobus, “that our 
virtues were not solely and entirely of British manu- 
facture. ’ ’ 

She was one of a little party of four who discov- 
ered themselves suddenly in the position of old friends 
together, with their daily lives bound up into one 
splendid fortnight at sea. All of them were young, 
all of them were happy, and for a time none of them 
looked very far backward or very far forward. 

‘ ‘ The gods themselves could not grudge me a fort- 
night ’s happiness,” Major Eden was saying to him- 
self. 

The Fates were kinder than the mind of man could 
imagine them to be. Destiny, after all, was just, as 
men and women had decided in spite of all experi- 
ence to the contrary that it always has been. Good 
luck need not be dissembled with a Pagan fear; but 
the wind from the sea might proclaim it, and the 
Furies themselves might well sheathe their abhorred 
shears in view of happiness so complete and so brief. 

Major Eden was not a young man, yet joy had 
hardly touched him before this ocean’s voyage began. 
As an officer in an English cavalry regiment with 
twenty years of service behind him, he had seen much 
of life, and had never asked whether or not it was 
worth living. He had done the day ’s work even when 
the day ’s work had been dull, had played a fair game 
and had taken the rough with the smooth. On the 


82 Snow upon the Desert 

whole, he had believed that life was fairly enjoyable. 
And now he was finding that it was so incredibly 
more than this that he was bewildered by the vision. 
He never asked for an instant what would happen 
when this fortnight was over. He was in love and 
happy, and happiness is the most serious thing in the 
world ! 

Once he said to the woman who all through the 
sunny voyage was his daily companion, ‘ ‘ I feel some- 
times as though I had smelt happiness before as some 
fragrant thing, but until now I have never tasted it. ’ ’ 

All the great joys of men seemed to surround him, 
and the lives of those who had cared greatly appealed 
to him with a tremendous force. It seemed to him 
then that no love could be poor, none could be ignoble, 
because the thing itself was so great and so divinely 
lovely. It swept him off his feet and made anything 
like sober consideration impossible. The thing had 
happened, he loved, and he could see nothing be- 
yond it. 

He never wearied of her society, and never had 
enough of it. He had always been old for his years 
— a quiet man whom few people knew well. He be- 
came young again with a buoyant sense of the joy of 
living. He had lost his head as well as his heart, and 
laughed over a hundred absurdities on board the ship 
because Mrs. Antrobus pointed them out to him. He 
thought then that laughter was the supreme expres- 
sion of love ; it had nothing to do with tears. 


83 


Snow upon the Desert 

They had been ashore, a party of four, at Port 
Said — Mrs. Antrohus and Major Eden, Captain 
Bethel and Hercules Lascelles. They had bought 
tawdry European things to fill the place of trifles 
which they had forgotten to bring from home. They 
had read English telegrams and bought specimens of 
Japanese art, and paper editions of English novels, 
and had wandered about the sandy streets of the 
desolate promontory which marks the boundary of the 
East and bids farewell to the West. 

Donkey rides were declined, and the ladies found 
their way to a cafe chantant under the protection of 
the two Englishmen, who held themselves gravely 
responsible for the decorousness of the performance. 
They heard a girl with a face to match the heart- 
broken strains of her violin play divinely in the hare, 
common room where they sat, and wondered where 
she had come from, and what was the trouble that 
had made the music and face alike beautiful. They 
ordered thick coffee and left it undrunk, and then, 
as the hour of sailing drew near, they quitted the 
humble concert-room and the girl with the tragic eyes, 
and rowed out in the dark across the harbor with its 
crowded shipping, and so to the gangway of the ship 
again, which was like a bit of England afloat — a 
dotted line girdling the world, and buckled together 
in a little island in the northern sea. 

Desolation seemed to have been attained on hoard 
the ‘ * Bolivia ’ 9 by the simple expedient of covering up 


84 Snow upon the Desert 

all the saloon furniture in brown holland, and 
sprinkling it with gritty coal dust. Shut portholes, 
locked cabin doors, and the fatigue that comes after 
a day ashore produce a mood unexpected perhaps an 
hour back. Mrs. Antrobus shivered a little as she 
leaned over the ship’s side, and then delicately 
brushed her elbows with her hands. The coal light- 
ers at the ship’s sides were nearly empty. Black 
figures, which she believed to be human beings, had 
almost finished heaving and carrying and shouting. 

‘‘There are always such swarms of them — such 
swarms of them,” she repeated. “Perhaps that is 
why it is so difficult to individualize the native. ’ ’ 

She wondered if it were possible that, in the eternal 
unities of the world and of humanity, there could be 
any connection between the man shoveling coal at the 
ship’s side and that other aspect of society which 
lives in drawing-rooms and understands art, and 
reads books and keeps itself clean. The universal 
instinct for some integrating agency — call it brother- 
hood or what one will — is inextinguishable, hut even 
instinct finds faith difficult at the coaling port of the 
East. 

Mrs. Antrobus watched the coal-lighters drift away 
from the ship ’s side. 

“There is an infernal payment for the right to 
live,” she said. Mrs. Antrobus was tired this evening. 

The deck chairs were stored and put away, the 
ship’s company had disappeared and had probably 


85 


Snow upon the Desert 

gone to bed in cabins with closed portholes rather 
than face the melancholy of a black and cheerless deck 
where there was nowhere to sit down. No tramp of 
feet along the wooden boards lent a cheery sense of 
companionship; there were no songs in the music 
room to-night, nor bridge parties under the electric 
lights on deck. 

‘ 4 1 have never felt so tired since I was bora ! ’ ’ said 
Mrs. Antrobus to herself, still lingering on deck. 

Over everything there was a queer halo of black 
dust which the flaming lights illuminated till it shone 
like a rainbow dipped in soot. Shoreward were the 
lights of the town, making a dazzling crescent of 
sheen, and casting long, ruddy streaks in the water 
like flaming torches, held steady and upright on a 
still night. Black hulls of ships loomed up in the 
polished bay, each with her necklace of port lights 
showing vividly on her black sides. There were cries 
of boatmen and a splashing of oars and the shrill hoot 
of fussy little tugs, and over all the eternal quiet of 
the sky. 

“And so we are soon to be east of Suez again !” 
she said, and shuddered a little. 

In the Canal a troopship passed them, its sides lined 
with soldiers going home. 

“You are going the wrong way l” they shouted out 
to the eastward-bound ship. Nearly all of them were 
laughing, and their little gibe had a ring of self- 
congratulation about it. 


86 Snow upon the Desert 

“We are going the wrong way,” repeated Mrs. 
Antrobus dully, as the ship, with its tiers of sun- 
burnt white faces, glided past them, ‘ ‘ and now it has 
all to be faced again.” 

When the coaling is over at Port Said the life of 
the East begins, and there are those to whom India 
means nothing but the Western civilization superim- 
posed upon it. On Mrs. Antrobus the life of the East 
pressed too closely. 

The moon rose over the aching silence of the des- 
ert and shed its cold, uncaring light upon it. One or 
two palm trees rustled gently, brushing their broad 
leaves together in a hushed, mysterious way as the 
black hull of the ship went smoothly on in the nar- 
row, flat waters of the Canal. 

“I am going into a dark room again,” she said. 

The land itself was mysterious to the point of ter- 
ror. Always there and forever was the Eastern pro- 
fusion of life, its heedlessness and the wasteful de- 
struction of it. Always and forever there was the 
Unknown and its nearness to those who dare to think 
alone. There was always the hush of dead cities, the 
funeral march of dead faiths; always, too, the mys- 
tery which no conqueror has ever conquered, the dim- 
ness of secrets, the whisper of a voice. 

“I think India mocks us still,” she said. “It has 
never yielded up its heart to anyone, nor made a 
confidence to a stranger. The burden of it is intol- 
erable.” 


87 


Snow upon the Desert 

Kings and emperors passed before her, a long ar- 
ray of conquerors. None of them had ever touched 
the spirit of India. And now the matter-of-fact 
Englishman was here, with his wholesome, plain, 
British mind, his strict accounts, and his red tape 
and sealing wax. Only he has ever ruled from home, 
and perhaps only he will never be conquered as India 
has conquered all those who have subdued it. The 
Englishman is only remotely affected by his sur- 
roundings, and perhaps for this very reason he knows 
no fear. 

“And so we have our gay season in Calcutta,” said 
Mrs. Antrobus, “and go back to our bungalows in 
the military station, and officialism pitches its tents 
and spreads its writing table, with its English sta- 
tionery and plain addressed notepaper, within the 
sound of the cries of wild animals roaring after their 
prey, and within sound, too, of the silence which 
speaks more loudly even than they.” 

“Down in the heart of it, what does the silence 
mean?” she whispered. “The blind gods know, per- 
haps — the dim, defaced old gods in the forgotten 
temples hear. But we make a noise and try not to 
listen, just as on board ship we chatter because deep 
is calling to deep, and we are not brave enough to 
attend. And so we pitch our tents as close as we 
can to one another, and in the morning we strike 
them again and march on. 

“It is a dusty, hot journey through India with the 


88 


Snow upon the Desert 

tents and the luggage, but I think we march along 
fairly well on the whole, not grumbling about the 
sand, which makes heavy walking, and hardly even 
inclined to murmur, when we look back over the long 
track that we have come, to find how little impres- 
sion our feet have made. The road perhaps has to be 
tramped down for our children’s feet to walk on. 

“I think the English women here have marched 
as bravely as any, because they came quite early to 
India, before even ice and punkahs arrived here. 
Also I think it was brave of them, because so many 
young brides stopped their journeying when they 
reached Calcutta churchyard. And still others came ; 
standing by the men in the Mutiny, preserving so 
faithfully the tradition of England and of home that 
the white race persists as never conqueror did in 
India before. 

* 4 There is no trace of them left in India. They 
never grew old with their friends, nor learned to 
love one rural spot where in the village church their 
fathers slept. They dwelt in moving tents, and their 
footprints left no trace in the sand.” 

The moon was flooding the world now, and casting 
black shadows momentously large upon the silver of 
the desert. Some solitary cries came across the water, 
and there was a rippling sound about the bows of the 
ship, accepting with dignity the guidance of a little 
tug. The shape of things was only guessed at by 
their shadows. 


89 


Snow upon the Desert 

“Oh,” said Mrs. Antrobus, beating her bands to- 
gether, “if only it were not so vast and so full of 
secrets. The fear of life,” she moaned, “the fear of 
life. It is far more dreadful than the fear of death. ’ ’ 

She took a long cloak which Major Eden brought 
her and wrapped it about her and stood, a long 
slender figure in the enveloping pall, looking straight 
away over the ship’s side, as she moved down the 
Canal. 4 4 The world seems to be made up of darkness 
and light to-night,” she said. 4 ‘Grays are more mer- 
ciful, I think.” 

“Yet we are inclined to think gray dull,” he re- 
plied. 

“We want light always,” she answered, “and we 
call it happiness, and seem to forget that it cannot 
exist without darkness. I could do without contrast 
for the sake of peaceful gray days.” 

“There are those who sit in the shadows,” he re- 
plied, “who cry from the bottom of their hearts, 
‘Only let us live and we will accept the long night 
for the sake of the dawning.’ ” 

“Night was made for sleep,” she answered, look- 
ing away across the water. “All dark hours should 
be spent in oblivion, or dawn itself may look very 
haggard and very garish.” 

“You are tired,” he said, with a man’s patient 
hope of finding some secondary cause which will pass 
as the explanation of a woman’s sadness. 

“I am so tired!” she exclaimed. “Why does one 


90 


Snow upon the Desert 

sit up so late? The night is too big for one! We 
ought to sleep, all of us, and try to forget about it. ’ ’ 

“ Don’t go yet,” he said, and like a boy he plucked 
at the light wrap she wore, seeking to detain her. 

“Everyone has gone to bed long ago.” 

“Miss Laseelles has not. The captain was telling 
her and Captain Bethel yarns a moment ago.” 

“Ought I to go and act chaperon and tell her tp 
go to bed?” Mrs. Antrobus said with a wan smile. 
“I think I hardly know myself in that position yet. 
People have always seemed to think that it was I 
who required all the chaperoning.” 

“You have never had anyone to take care of you,” 
he said, and he laid his hand upon her shoulder. 

“Oh! but, my dear, I have had crowds,” she an- 
swered, breaking into a laugh. 

Conversation must not become too intimate to-night. 
A man must not lay his dear protecting hand upon a 
woman’s shoulder in the midst of the solitude of the 
black and silent void. The music of the desert was 
intoxicating; its tremendous silence vibrated like the 
strings of an instrument whose thrilling effect can be 
felt long after its sound has become inaudible. The 
ship glided silently on between sand-banks, and threw 
mysterious shadows across the desert, peopling it with 
strange shapes. 

“What are we going to do when this is all over?” 
he said suddenly. 

“We will say good-bye.” 


Snow upon the Desert 91 

1 ‘You have said it scores of times to scores of other 
fellows/ ’ 

“Yes,” she said steadily, “scores of times.” 

“Don’t tell me we are all alike,” he entreated. 
“Do not say that it is just the same to you whom 
you say good-bye to.” 

Mrs. Antrobus was silent. 

“I am not even going to tell you that I love you,” 
he said, breaking out into speech. “ I do not ask you 
to care for me. Only let me do something for you. 
Let me make you a little bit happy and shield you 
from things that hurt, and care for you when you 
are afraid.” 

“I am horribly afraid,” she said. 

“You are afraid of India,” he said. 

‘ 4 Oh, not of the men and women there ! ’ ’ she said, 
breaking into a laugh. “Not of the men and women 
who are amused by me, and who would have turned 
me out of their midst long ago if they could. They 
are not things to be afraid of ! Besides, I have good 
fighting stuff in me.” 

“You require all your courage,” he said. 

They had never spoken about Jack Antrobus; 
everyone knew the man, and in India there are very 
seldom divers opinions about anyone. Society is com- 
paratively small there. A man is either a good fel- 
low or a bad fellow, and public opinion is at one 
about him, and for the most part unalterable. There 
is very little privacy in the verandah life of the bun- 


92 Snow upon the Desert 

galow or in tents. Curtains are not like solid bricks, 
and barefooted servants move softly. A man’s char- 
acter is weighed scrupulously in the balance, as the 
gold in the bank whence he drew his pay is weighed — 
not mercilessly but justly. 

It would have been some sort of protection to Mrs. 
Antrobus if anybody had been able to pretend to be- 
lieve that her husband was a worthy person, deserv- 
ing either her love or her respect. It would have been 
a still surer protection had a man felt that Jack 
might have disapproved of this or that. But, as a 
matter of fact, it was widely known that he cared 
not at all what she did or where she went, or whom 
she knew. Colonel Antrobus did not believe in hu- 
man nature, least of all in woman nature, and he 
preferred a woman who did not believe in it either. 
He was an easy-going, fat man, who could do another 
man a bad turn with a certain jolly cheerfulness 
which proclaimed that everything was fair in love 
and war, and that all life was really a game in which 
the man who won had the best of it. He had no 
glimpse beyond the common things of life, and these 
he used commonly. 

In his youth he had been a daring rider until he 
grew too heavy for racing, polo, and pig-sticking. 
He now contented himself by giving a couple of 
chargers exercise, and in betting far beyond his means 
at local races. He drank more than was good for 
him, but his admirable constitution hardly seemed to 


93 


Snow upon the Desert 

be affected either by that indulgence or by the large 
dinners which he enjoyed even in the hot weather. 
Sickness, with its attendant despondency, never 
troubled him, for he had hardly had a bad day’s ill- 
ness in his life, and, being impervious to such weak- 
ness himself, he could joke with those who were on 
the sick list, and tell them to follow his example and 
eat and drink as they liked. He was not a cruel man. 
He never enjoyed making his wife wince — he simply 
never could imagine why she should wince. Having 
killed her beliefs, he now believed her to be a damned 
sensible woman. 

Major Eden had known Colonel Antrobus for years 
and disliked him more than he disliked anyone else. 
He always thought that when he met her he would 
dislike Mrs. Antrobus also. Everything that he had 
heard about her was at variance with what he ad- 
mired in women. 

Her story was well known in India, and Major 
Eden more than anyone else had cause for resent- 
ment against her. He had heard the usual condem- 
nation pronounced, and had shared in it, while say- 
ing no word either of good or bad. His loss was too 
deep for anything so petty as vituperation. He had 
merely been at some pains to avoid her, and in India 
they had never met. It was a mere chance that threw 
them together at a London dinner party. He was 
asked to take her in to dinner. As he bowed to her 
and gave her his arm he saw nothing but the face 


94 Snow upon the Desert 

of his dead friend, and heard again his voice, as he 
used to like to hear it seeking his companionship, 
calling him to share in some game, asking him to join 
in a ride or walk. Always, he thought, the boy had 
wanted his society, and to this old young man, grave 
and inclined for reserve, the outspoken preference of 
the well-loved youth had been of extraordinary con- 
sequence. He remembered his home-coming after his 
success in Northern India, and the joy his mother 
had of him. She would have liked her son to he in 
uniform always, she told him, because of the bronze 
cross which he wore. And now his mother had 
charge of the medals and the bronze cross, and Harry 
Nicholson lay in the graveyard up in Simla, and Mrs. 
Antrobus was going in to dinner with his oldest 
friend. Philip sheltered himself behind effectual re- 
serve. He would be civil to Mrs. Antrobus, as it 
behooved him to be in his friend ’s house, but he knew 
all about her. He was prepared to resent it even if 
she were ordinarily agreeable to him. 

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Antrobus was tired and 
hardly spoke at all. Their host was Tom Scott, a 
widower half-brother of the lady, and Eden had an 
idea that she was paying a visit in the house, and 
was acting as hostess to-night. When she spoke to 
him at all it was with something of the punctilious- 
ness of a tired hostess who believes that her guests 
should have a certain amount of conversation meted 
out to them. Major Eden found her dull. 


Snow upon the Desert 95 

After dinner a little girl of the widower ’s fluttered 
down to the drawing-room, and showed off some danc- 
ing on the polished floor. She was a graceful little 
creature, all white embroidery and flying pink rib- 
bons, her long thin legs clad in brown silk stockings, 
and her tiny feet in bronze shoes. She held her skirts 
out and danced lightly to the playing of the gov- 
erness, who sat at the piano with head turned from 
the music and her eyes on the small feet that slid 
and skipped upon the polished floor. Tom’s heart 
was bound up in his child, and as he watched her 
nimble dancing and fluttering movements his face 
beamed with pleasure in the performance. Suddenly 
she slipped upon the floor’s clear surface which re- 
flected her white dress as in a pool. She fell and 
clutched at a table which, overturning, crushed her 
foot and caused her face to blanch suddenly. Major 
Eden never forgot the quick action of the woman by 
his side. The child was picked up before another 
could get near her, and Mrs. Antrobus held her close 
to her, not speaking at first, but soothing the little 
woman’s sobs, clasping her with firm hands full of 
comfort and security, and in the end carrying her off 
to her own bed because the child insisted upon it that 
it was the one thing that would comfort her. 

“Will someone bring up her fan?” he heard Mrs. 
Antrobus call back, when she was halfway upstairs. 
“She is afraid it will get broken.” 

He ran up the staircase with it himself, and saw 


96 Snow upon the Desert 

her sitting on the bed with the child’s arms about 
her, her face all tenderness as she loosened tumbled 
ribbons and smoothed disordered curls. 

Afterward he remembered hearing that she herself 
had lost her only child by death. 

They met often after that. Major Eden never 
knew how weighty a thing in his life had been his 
resentment toward her until that resentment was 
overcome and replaced by a passionate loyalty. Who- 
ever had been to blame for the tragedy up there be- 
neath the pines at Simla, the fault was not hers. 
Perhaps she had been too divinely kind to the dead 
man ; perhaps she had appealed to him in some great 
need; perhaps she had merely said good-bye to him, 
and that would be most intolerable of all. He did 
not know. All he did know was that he trusted her. 
His love for his friend became a saner and sweeter 
memory. Perhaps Bertha Antrobus had loved him 
too ; he would never seek to know this. Some burden 
rolled away from him. He knew now that, whatever 
the cause was which had sent his comrade to his 
death, Mrs. Antrobus could not have been unkind to 
him — no one could have been unkind to Harry Nichol- 
son; least of all Bertha Antrobus. That put his 
world into a better position than it had been before. 
There was nothing left to do now but to atone for 
the old harsh judgment which had embittered so 
dear a memory. 


Snow upon the Desert 97 

He cut his leave short by a week, and took his 
passage in the “ Bolivia. ” “Perhaps it is she who 
needs comforting more than I,” he said to himself, 
and learned to listen for the faint sound of dropping 
tears behind her laughter. 


Chapter VI 


T HE woman who has been tragic overnight is 
always the gayest in the morning. She who has 
wept until her pillow is stained with tears is subject 
to morning moods of almost glittering brightness. If 
she has allowed even a little piece of her soul to ap- 
pear in the evening she takes some care to lock it in 
a case of steel on the day following. 

Major Eden, ascending to the deck after breakfast, 
sought eagerly for the corner where the four deck 
chairs were daily set. The corner was theirs by right 
now; not even Mrs. Mackenzie ventured to intrude 
into it — proving the inalienable right which some 
people have of possession. 

“I thought I should find you,” Major Eden said, 
feeling pleasantly the homeliness of the little en- 
campment with its folding card tables covered with 
books, the large, luxurious cushions which filled the 
ladies’ deck chairs, and the rugs and trifles dispersed 
about. 

He looked as he said it like a man returning home, 
and his grave eyes were full of the glamour of last 
night. All through the sleeping hours he had thought 
of the forsaken decks, and of himself and Mrs. An- 
98 


Snow upon the Desert 99 

trobus in a grand solitariness standing together on 
the ship that glided softly through the sandbanks of 
the Canal. Once, being unable to rest, he had 
mounted the companion staircase and sought the 
deck of the ship, to live if possible the heavenly 
vision over again. He saw the night, deeply blue, 
around him, and the stars in their solemn passage 
through the rigging of the ship. He heard the rip- 
pling of the water on the bow, and listened again 
for the desert’s night music. But the thing would 
not live. He wanted the tall cloaked figure beside 
him, and he protested inwardly with passionate im- 
patience against the fact that the greatest experi- 
ences soonest become far-away memories. 

He had leaned across the rail where her elbows 
had touched, and looked back to the now faintly 
twinkling lights of Port Said. But it was Bertha he 
wanted, it was the living woman he wanted, in the 
untranslatable night. The ship was only a ship with- 
out her, the banks of the Canal were sandbanks, even 
the solemn procession of the stars had no meaning 
in it! What was the transforming influence about 
her which seemed to gather up into itself all the life- 
less things in the world, and to unite them and make 
them live in one transcendent whole? It seemed to 
him that apart altogether from his love for her there 
could be but few women with this unifying, crystal- 
lizing power. Perhaps some of the old dead, won- 
derful women of the world possessed it — the saints, 


100 Snow upon the Desert 

the queens, the famous women. He knew that. they 
had not only moved men, but had moved worlds, and 
such as they had been so was Bertha. He seemed to 
realize something of the power of them. The lives of 
great women had always been a fascinating study to 
him. We expect great feats in war from a man or 
brilliant statesmanship ; we depend on his keen brain 
or his steady hand. But of these women we have had 
motherhood and statesmanship and beguiling love 
too. They have ruled home as well as governed a 
kingdom. “And then,” said Major Eden, “we won- 
der if woman will ever be man’s equal.” He was 
not controversial on these matters; he was not even 
an idealist ; his was a convinced and wholly acceptable 
pleasure in one splendid human being. 

He had a hundred things to say to her this morn- 
ing, and almost he grudged her the companionship of 
the young girl at her side. He must take her away 
somewhere quite alone and pick up some of the un- 
finished and tangled threads of last night; he must 
continue the conversation that seemed to him so sweet, 
he must ask questions and have her replies, must look 
in her face and learn more from that even than from 
her speech. Together they must go back to the place 
which they had reached, and he must hear more, dis- 
cuss more, feel more deeply, know more intimately 
the great things of life. Here was a point where he 
might comfort her, and here again was a place where 
he might only learn humbly from her. There was 


101 


Snow upon the Desert 

no difficulty in his mind about returning to the sub- 
ject which had been with him all night, nor had he 
any hesitation about beginning the conversation which 
was already on his lips. He would not say awk- 
wardly, “As we were saying last night/ ’ He would 
take her hand in his for a moment again, and sit 
beside her, and perhaps the silence would speak, and 
afterward he or she — it did not matter which — would 
take up the last word, like a man dictating from 
some written notes. She would understand. There 
had been no break in their communion of minds. 

“We were trying,” said Mrs. Antrobus when she 
had bidden him good morning, “to get rid of the 
enormous difficulty which everyone on board ship 
must have experienced of discovering the best use to 
which we can put our provokingly small tub of fresh 
water in the morning.” 

Bethel and Herky laughed like children, and ad- 
mitted that they had brought an immense amount of 
thought to bear upon the matter. 

“It is great questions like these,” said Mrs. Antro- 
bus, “which are really constantly filling our minds, 
although we pretend to occupy ourselves with trifles.” 

Once upon a time a man quitted his house for a 
space and went to America, and while he was away 
thieves entered it and stole his goods, and not only 
so, but in the end they set fire to his house also and 
destroyed it, and when he returned the wanderer 
saw an empty field, and wondered whether it could 


102 Snow upon the Desert 

have been there that the building which he had reared 
had once stood. 

Major Eden was searching for the woman whom he 
thought this morning to have found in her former 
place. 

Digby was quicker in following her moods than he 
was, and while he still groped his way blankly in 
empty spaces, the young man, with his hands lightly 
clasped between his knees, his handsome head bare 
to the wind, and his face filled with amusement, re- 
plied, laughing, “If we spent half the time studying 
philosophy which we take to think about how much 
we ought to tip servants we should all he quite wise. ’ ’ 

The necessity for speech and the obvious need for 
joining in the conversation caused Major Eden to 
say without meaning it, and in a flat voice, “Oh, 
tipping servants, yes, it is rather a problem.” 

He looked dumbly at Mrs. Antrobus. 

“I want to write a book on the minor afflictions of 
life,” said Digby. “Nearly every man thinks him- 
self unlucky ” 

“Oh, and every woman, too!” cried Mrs. Antrobus. 
“Men are convinced that the Fates are against them 
because they do not win money at races, or because 
their horses go lame, and women are certain that they 
must have been born under an evil star because they 
never win raffles at a bazaar, or because they have 
colds when they want to go to a party.” 

“There are no such things as minor afflictions,” 


103 


Snow upon the Desert 

said Captain Bethel with conviction. “If a thing is 
an affliction at all it is desperately unpleasant while 
it lasts.” 

“Major Eden does not know anything about minor 
afflictions,” said Mrs. Antrobus, glancing brightly at 
him, as a stranger might have done. “He has con- 
tributed nothing to our intellectual discussion.” 

“Civilization,” he began rather heavily, “has pro- 
vided all sorts of complicated paths without furnish- 
ing any handbook to show us the way.” 

He was not a man who, so to speak, listens to his 
own remarks, hut he fancied that there was some- 
thing sententious about what he had said. This non- 
sense superimposed on the conversation of last night 
caused him confusion. 

“Tell me all your very worst troubles,” she said, 
laughing openly. 

He winced a little, and she noticed it, and began 
to speak with a certain brilliance which was infec- 
tious. Her voice, always refined in quality, was 
singularly devoid of assertion, and yet wherever Mrs. 
Antrobus was she was generally the speaker. He 
had often thought that her remarks, however trivial, 
had a certain freshness about them which he found 
lacking in most women ’s conversation. When he was 
with her he knew for the first time that he was tired 
of conventional phrases and stereotyped modes of 
thought. He loved her nonsense as much as he loved 
her serious moods; but nonsense to-day was like the 


104 Snow upon the Desert 

tinkling of some unwanted little bell, while a great 
clanging as of a splendid peal of cathedral chimes 
was sounding in his head. 

“Do tell us the worst at least of your minor af- 
flictions/ J said Herky gaily. 

He felt he was outside the circle to-day, and re- 
quired drawing into it by this girl’s friendly over- 
tures. He had a foretaste, perhaps, of what it means 
to be old and a little past taking an interest in the 
conversation of quite young people. 

“I believe,” he said with difficulty, “that if one 
begins to wonder what one’s opening remark will be 
when one takes a lady in to dinner an abyss opens 
under one’s feet.” 

“I have studied that subject for years,” Digby 
cried, “and I have never hit upon anything more 
brilliant to say than, ‘I wonder if we shall ever find 
our places! ” 

“And I,” said Herky, “once became nearly gray 
trying to invent a new way of receiving people at a 
party. My aunt shakes hands and says, ‘Too good 
of you to come,’ and her guest replies, ‘Too good of 
you to ask me.’ Are these remarks inevitable?” 

“Yes,” cried Digby. “You must never alter those 
conventions among English-speaking people. They 
are like questions and answers in the Catechism, and 
it would be irreverent to tamper with them. ’ ’ 

“When you first took me in to dinner, Major 


Snow upon the Desert 105 

Eden,” said Mrs. Antrobus, turning to him, “you 
said nothing at all.” 

That hurt too; hut no woman can resist grasping 
a nettle to see if it stings. Their intimacy was going 
back in giant strides, and Major Eden felt like a man 
who is slipping backward, and who cannot recover 
his foothold. The ground he stood on was shifting 
sand; there was nothing to take hold of, not even a 
thornbush that he could clutch at, which, even if it 
pierced his hand, might help him to overhaul the way 
he had lost. 

“I want to show you how a man puts on a lady’s 
opera cloak,” said Mrs. Antrobus, more gaily than 
before, “and then you must tell me if there is any 
performance more standardized than that!” 

For her to mimic a passing action was to indulge 
in a piece of inimitable acting. She seized a light 
cloak from a chair, and beginning to work round it 
from the bottom she murmured with a bewildered 
air: 

“If I could only find the neck of the beastly 
thing!” 

The voice, the action, belonged to the foyer of a 
theater, or the box of an opera. A young man’s per- 
plexity was suggested by a frown. His bewilderment 
over the difficulty of adjusting a cloak was rendered, 
in pantomime, by a look, a helpless movement, blended 
with a polite desire to be of use. 

Captain Bethel must stand up and have the imagi- 


106 


Snow upon the Desert 

nary cloak wrapped round his shoulders, and she ex- 
plained to him that she had placed it rather high 
up on his head, and had pulled down a good deal of 
his carefully arranged hair. “This is known / 9 she 
said, ‘ ‘ as wrapping her up properly . 9 9 

She looked lugubriously at the young man through 
an imaginary eyeglass and remarked, ‘ ‘ Is that all you 
have got to put on?” 

Her vitality carried everything before it. Major 
Eden began to laugh even in his bewilderment. Noth- 
ing fell flat from her, nothing seemed to be less than 
a success. Nature had designed her for an actress. 
He could imagine her appealing to every sort of emo- 
tion in a crowded house. Had she asked laughter of 
an audience of red Indians they would have laughed. 
All moods of hers were catching; or was it that an 
appeal from her was never lost? He did not know. 
He began to smile as he watched her, and then took 
up, with a laugh, his share of the absurd game. “I 
believe,” he said, “that we think that a woman never 
puts on enough wraps and is seldom in time ; hut it is 
permissible to imagine that we need not say so as 
often as we do.” 

Hercules said, with a pretense at impertinence, 
which her voice was unable properly to express, 
“Digby repeats himself dreadfully sometimes.” 

Whereupon the young man laughed fatuously. “I 
am a frightful bore, Herky,” he said. 

“Ah, hut we all have our little standard remarks,” 


Snow upon the Desert 107 

broke in Mrs. Antrobus. “Why is it that if we ad- 
mire a woman’s dress she always says it is an old 
one? And if we say she has pretty hair she invari- 
ably says, ‘It used to be very thick, but it has been 
falling out shamefully lately.’ What do you do that 
is inevitable, Captain Bethel?” 

“Iam always having my fortune told,” he replied. 
* ‘ I love it, and when I spread out my hands I cannot 
help saying, ‘I am afraid they are very dirty,’ al- 
though I may that moment have washed them.” 

“No man can help saying that,” said Major Eden, 
“it is a sort of disease, just as some people can 
never say good morning without remarking on the 
weather.” 

‘ ‘ I can always pick out English people from Anglo- 
Indians,” remarked Mrs. Antrobus, “by the way in 
which they greet you. In England they say ‘How 
do you do/ whatever time of the day it is, while in 
India they say, ‘Good morning’ until lunchtime, and 
then ‘ Good evening, ’ although it is only three o ’clock 
in the afternoon. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘ ‘ Good evening, ’ or ‘ Good afternoon, ’ always seem 
to me the salutations that one gives to the young man 
behind the counter,” Major Eden said. “I could not 
say ‘Good afternoon’ to a friend.” 

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Antrobus, “if anyone ever 
acknowledged himself or herself to be an Anglo-Indian 
or a tourist. They are epithets we always apply to 
other people. We may call ourselves other hard 


108 


Snow upon the Desert 

names, and even say that we are selfish or mean, but 
we have never become tourists or Anglo-Indians. ’ ’ 
“Although we may be both and glory in it,” said 
Digby Bethel, “it’s the name that counts! A rose 
wouldn ’t smell nearly so sweet if it was called tripe. ’ ’ 
“I used to think that the girls at school rather en- 
joyed calling themselves hard names, but they were 
vexed if one did not contradict them,” said Herky. 

“Why are women so fond of praise?” said Mrs. 
Antrobus quickly. “We live on approval and for 
approval. If we seem to be undecided or to waver 
about anything it is simply because we cannot make 
up our minds which approval is most valuable to us 
— the chilly, safe, altogether expensive sort which the 
world makes us buy so dearly, or the warm, sincere, 
precious kind that those who love us give us, or the 
solitary sad sort which conscience bestows.” 

While she spoke Major Eden let his eyes rest upon 
her face. His was a protective love, touched with a 
certain divine tenderness for the woman who had 
suffered. Even where she perplexed him he could 
never think hardly of her again. Not yet could he 
quite forgive himself for his old thoughts of her, and 
he hated his former prejudice, as a man may hate a 
sin which he has overcome and outlived. 

“Tell me what else it is a woman loves?” he said, 
trying to follow up a vague advantage. 

“Nothing,” she replied, and laughed, “A woman 


109 


Snow upon the Desert 

wants to be admired, and a man wants to be amused ; 
there is nothing beyond that.” 

She found Herky ’s eyes fixed upon her with a look 
of questioning in them, and she said lightly and af- 
fectionately, “Little girls think they know a great 
deal about all sorts of other things, but then little 
girls are heroic as a rule, and I am not.” 

“Little girls see through people, and have found 
out a secret about you!” Herky cried. “You are so 
much afraid of approval that you always try to give 
yourself a bad character to ward off all the love 
which we insist on giving you.” 

Major Eden turned to her, and said in a low voice, 
“Yes, you are afraid of approval — you are afraid.” 

He could bear her laughter, but not her tears. 

“Come away,” he said, giving her his hand to 
assist her out of her chair, “come away from every- 
body.” His voice was insistent. “You are to come 
for a walk with me,” he said. 

She rose obediently and followed him, and they 
strolled past the other passengers without speaking. 
When they reached the farther end of the deck they 
stopped and looked across the sandy waste to the 
low-lying hills with mauve shadows on them ; the un- 
complaining desert stretched away limitless toward 
the sky on either side of them. All that greatly con- 
cerned it was past. It had had its day, and that day 
was over. Only the night wind playing upon it, and 
the moon rising in solitary grandeur, said: “We are 


110 Snow upon the Desert 

great because we are dead.” White bones and low- 
lying graves and mourners’ tears may be forgotten 
in the desert’s triumphal chorus to the majestic dead. 

The Arabs on the Canal bank chanted their mo- 
notonous song. Some men, brisker than the rest, were 
engaged on repairs here and there along its edge; 
their energy looked out of place upon the eternally 
sleeping plain. 

He and she had gone back to yesterday evening at 
last. Like a swimmer who throws up his hands and 
begins to feel the luxury of dying easily after the 
painfulness of struggling with the waves, Mrs. An- 
trobus said, “Life is rather difficult.” 

He nodded his head without speaking. 

“And one would have to go back such a long way 
to start again at the time before one had learned to 
laugh at everything.” 

“Do not go back,” he said. “Be just what you 
are now.” 

“Do not tempt me into thinking things are easy,” 
she said sharply, ‘ ‘ or that one can do better and love 
more nobly. That is the sort of things which a happy 
fortnight at sea may cheat one with; but things are 
too hard for one when one gets back to realities. Fail- 
ure is a foregone conclusion.” 

“Failure does not seem to me even to touch you,” 
he said. “To me you are the woman who always 
does right, whom always and forever I shall ap- 
prove.” 


Ill 


Snow upon the Desert 

“And I am afraid of approval,” she retorted al- 
most querulously. “It is quite true what Herky said 
just now, I am afraid of it. One cannot sit down 
comfortably under approval. Do you not see it is a 
call to get up and try to do better ? Think me wicked, 
Philip, if you love me even a little. Think me as 
wicked as heaps of other people do!” 

“I think,” he said, “you are the best and the most 
beautiful woman that God ever made.” 


Chapter VII 


HY did not Mr. Belt marry Mrs. Mackenzie 



V V in the days of their youth ?” Major Eden 
said. They were nearing Aden now, and the weather 
was growing hotter. “Only a man as deaf as he 
should marry a woman whose tongue is so powerful. ’ ’ 
4 4 Only such a bore as he could deserve her constant 
companionship , 9 ’ said Mrs. Antrobus. 

Major Eden began to laugh. His laughter was one 
of the attractive things about him. Being a grave 
man, it was rare, and perhaps because of this its 
quality always seemed fresh ; it was like some untried 
voice with a ring of youth about it. The lines round 
the corners of his eyes puckered themselves fantas- 
tically, and made a smile before his lips parted. “You 
are very severe about that old gentleman,” he said. 

“If he knew he was an old gentleman, I should 
deal more leniently with him,” she replied with a 
shrug, “but he evidently has no idea that at his age 
love-making is an absurdity. Do you know a clock- 
work toy, which is so constructed that whenever the 
little woman comes out the little man pops up and 
says ‘good morning!’? Whenever I appear on deck 


112 


Snow upon the Desert 113 

Mr. Belt’s mechanism makes him say to me, ‘Have 
you seen Miss Lascelles anywhere?’ ” 

“Where does one look for a girl on board ship?” 
he acquiesced. “She is either in the music room, on 
deck, or in her own cabin, where presumably she does 
not wish to be disturbed.” 

Mr. Belt did an enormous amount of writing and 
business on board ship. He traveled with a secretary 
and had a second cabin fitted up as a writing room. 

“You rather snubbed the old fellow,” Major Eden 
continued, turning his head round on his deck chair. 
The real pleasure of conversation with Mrs. Antrobus 
consisted in her change of expression, the quick 
thought that played across her face, her apprehension 
of the most flitting suggestion. Nothing remained 
sterile in her vivid imagination; nothing was lost 
upon her, or failed to reach its mark. Quick to take 
up a joke and fling it back again, she was quicker still 
perhaps to see beneath some common speech the char- 
acter and personality that were revealed. She never 
misunderstood, except wilfully, and she seldom 
frowned, because, as she used to say with the care- 
lessness which snapped a finger at good opinion, 
“only people with principles ever frown, and only 
good people are ever shocked.” 

She frowned a little now. “I am willing to accept 
him as a joke, but he bought a present for our little 
friend at Port Said.” 

“Foolish old man! What did he buy?” 


114 Snow upon the Desert 

“Oh, I don’t know — a Japanese box, a trifle of 
some sort. But we cannot have elderly admirers be- 
coming sentimental on board ship. There is no room 
for it; and elderly sentimental admirers never seem 
to remember that they must not look unutterable 
things when, for instance, they are eating cold beef 
and pickles.” 

“Heaven keep us from old age!” he said. 

“Old age is a convention,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 
“Probably most of us would not know we were old, 
or at least elderly, if we were not told so either by 
the looking-glass or by our friends. Why this eter- 
nal dealing in numbers? I am; is not that enough 
without making a horrible mental sum in addition to 
find out how long I have been?” 

“Time,” he said, “seems to have been given to us 
as rather a grudging sort of gift. Very few of us 
think we have enough of it, and, like men who own a 
limited quantity of some precious thing, we become 
niggardly with it, and are always counting it up to 
see how much we have got left. ’ ’ 

“We weigh it and balance it with everything we 
have,” she cried. “If we take a house we calculate 
quite cheerfully on the chance of a thirty or forty 
years’ lease being sufficient for us; we buy our very 
carpets and curtains to last our time.” 

“So that old age,” he said, “is not really calcu- 
lated backward, but forward, to find out how much 
time we have left.” 


115 


Snow upon the Desert 

“And then we begin quite bravely to patch/ ’ she 
said in a steady voice. “Knowing full well that 
when the process of patching is begun a thing may be 
said to he nearly worn out. In men, patching is only 
one of the decencies of life; in a woman it is a trag- 
edy.’ J 

“Why won’t they even allow us to decay in 
peace ? ” he said with a smile. 

“Oh, let us fight it out!” she said. “Decaying in 
peace is associated in my mind with resignation and 
calm old age, and everything which I most dislike. I 
am content to fight on to the end.” 

“The end,” he said gravely, “may he only the 
beginning of things. One doesn’t like the idea of 
snuffing out.” 

“I find death unbelievable,” she said quickly. 

“If it means merely ceasing to be ” he began. 

But she interrupted him, crying, “ No ! If it exists, 
let it be an acknowledged foe.” 

“Whom we have got to meet,” he said, bracing 
his shoulders with an unconscious movement which 
men who had followed him into more than one fight 
would have recognized. 

“Death and I will never meet, therefore why 
should I dread it?” 

He turned curious eyes upon her, waiting for more. 

“Oh, I am jumbling up some second-hand philos- 
ophy,” she said, “but I am not going to pretend that 
the Epicurean principle is my own, or that the com- 


116 Snow upon the Desert 

fortable formula that ‘where death is I am not, and 
where I am death is not ’ is new to you. I only know 
that it is a mistake, an accident, a stupid breakdown 
of a pumping machine called the heart, which per- 
haps the physicians of to-morrow may make to pump 
for a hundred years or so more than it is wont to do 
to-day. A little more knowledge, a little more power, 
and the foe of ten thousands of years may be van- 
quished.’ J 

“Eternal life ” 

“Eternity may be only the vision with which we 
console ourselves in response to the instinct that tells 
us that, physiologically, life may yet be proved to be 
capable of indefinite prolongation.” 

“Should we all choose it, I wonder?” 

“Yes, yes,” she said eagerly; then banishing grav- 
ity she added, “Perhaps anyone so alive as I am finds 
it hard to realize submission to the domination of 
anything so cold and unsympathetic as the grave.” 

He himself had looked death too often in the face 
to be afraid of it. It could not be altogether a 
stranger to the man who had been through three 
campaigns, who had seen cholera camps, and tents 
filled to their very doorways with young gaunt figures 
in the grip of enteric. Now he hated it because in 
the far future it might hurt or dismay Bertha An- 
trobus. Moved by some large uncomprehended com- 
passion for her, he said awkwardly and with tender- 
ness, “I hope it won’t be lonely for you.” 


117 


Snow upon the Desert 

I I Oh, but I have always been alone. ’ ’ 

II I do not know anything about the next world, 
none of us do, although we pretend to,” he replied 
humbly, “but I know they talk of the meeting of 
friends in some after state. Bertha, if I am dead 
first I will meet you and see you through whatever 
dangers there are, or however dark it is. ’ ’ 

“I shall have man’s escort even there!” she said 
discordantly. “Other women die serenely, and some 
saint or tender Redeemer is with them in the Valley, 

but I ” Her voice broke suddenly, the desire to 

speak lightly opposing an impulse of seriousness. 1 1 1 
will keep you waiting a long time, for I shall not die 
until I am very old, and you will wait patiently for 
me, for which I shall not even thank you. Oh, why 
do we talk such nonsense, or pretend that the face and 
the form which must perish will find recognition 
afterwards ? The whole thing is unthinkable ! ’ ’ 

His unexacting faith carried him further than hers, 
and he remained silent. 

* ‘ Old age is cruel, death is still more cruel. Do not 
let us think of either of them. Let us make to-day 
hold all the pleasure it can. No, no ! Do not answer 
me gravely, and persist in talking as though I had 
been brought up in a country parsonage and had 
learned the Collects on Sundays. I came out to India 
when I was sixteen, I flirted when I was seventeen, 
and at eighteen I married Jack Antrobus.” 

The sea rolled gently with the sunlight on it, and 


118 Snow upon the Desert 

the engines throbbed like living heart-beats. The 
flying-fish played over the surface of the waters with 
a flutter of silver fins. A ship’s hell gave the hour 
and seemed to strike a solitary note in the vast peace 
and silence of the encircling ocean. Sea and sky met, 
and the waves which the ship was making would break 
on some shore countless miles away. The decks were 
deserted in the long sleepy afternoon. 

He and she were on some phantom ship that moved 
without wind or sails. Perhaps all the rest of the 
ship’s crew and passengers were dead, and only he 
and she lived on alone. 

She broke the silence in an unexpected way at 
last. “I am going to fill all the relentless minutes 
very pleasantly, and my friends shall gather such 
amusement from them as they can share with me, 
but I will not he serious.” She repeated again, her 
voice rising a little, “I will not be serious. I do not 
believe in it. I want to be on shore again and feel 
the ground firm beneath my feet. On this ocean with 
its horrible want of limitation we begin to take our- 
selves seriously, and to discover that we have souls. 
Give me little things,” she cried. “Small activities, 
little aims ! Infinities — all the things which we really 
believe in — are such a horrible burden!” 

Mrs. Mackenzie and her knitting, having enjoyed a 
brief period of repose, came on deck together. The 
long red scarf, so punctually pierced with bone knit- 
ting needles, was laid in a deep basket attached to 


Snow upon the Desert 119 

the side of her chair, while she herself sank into the 
seat and remarked that she was wearying for a cup 
of tea. One by one passengers began to come up 
from below out of the temporary seclusion which 
board ship life makes difficult of attainment. 

“We think we know each other pretty well,” said 
Mrs. Antrobus. “How amazed we should be if we 
knew what one-half of these people have been dream- 
ing about !” 

“What have you been dreaming about, Captain 
Bethel ? ’ ’ she said lightly, as Digby came on deck. 

“I have not been asleep,” said the young man. 

As they neared Bombay his mind had become dis- 
turbed again. He had telegraphed to his chief as 
fully as an expensive code allows, but he had not had 
the answer which he expected at Port Said. What- 
ever the message was to have been, it would put 
everything all right. But no telegram arrived. 

An A.D.C. is in the nature of things a dealer in 
conventions, and Captain Bethel was not an excep- 
tion to this rule. He was of the race and of the 
class which demands a certain amount of formality, 
and, above all things, he believed in the strict follow- 
ing of accepted standards by women. It was the 
only safe plan for them — the only way of escape from 
the strife of tongues. On the whole he had been per- 
fectly happy about the way in which things had 
turned out. Mrs. Antrobus had proved herself a 
friend indeed, and what a dear woman she was ! No 


120 Snow upon the Desert 

one could have been kinder to a maid forlorn. But 
then, many people did not approve of Mrs. Antrobus ; 
she was not usually in request as a chaperon; still, 
he hoped that Sir Hercules would believe that he, 
Digby, had acted for the best when he accepted her 
guardianship for his daughter. 

Meanwhile the paramount question in his mind, 
to the exclusion even of conventional considerations, 
was simply whether he could or could not make Herky 
love him and consent to marry him after she returned 
to her father’s house. “She loves me! She loves me 
not!” If he had pulled a daisy to pieces to try to 
discover the extent of the girl’s feelings for him it 
could not have been less convincing than the deduc- 
tions which he drew after being a fortnight in her 
company. 

Mrs. Antrobus could have explained everything 
to him in a very short time, and she was saying to 
herself, “When will these two young people discover 
that their love is mutual?” She made up her mind 
that the discovery must be made by the girl herself. 
The unconventionality of her journey made impos- 
sible any hint which would render her self-conscious. 
She had run away from school with a man who was 
devotedly in love with her; that was foolish enough, 
Mrs. Antrobus said to herself, but suppose it should 
occur to her that she had run away from school with 
the man whom she loved ! 

Mrs. Antrobus decided that the affair must be 


121 


Snow upon the Desert 

treated matter-of-faetly. Any hint of love at the 
present moment might cause Miss Lascelles much 
confusion, and perhaps serve to sunder two lives 
which it was obviously intended should he spent for 
and with each other. Herky must return to her 
father’s house, Captain Bethel must continue to he 
his A.D.C., and time, to whom is deputed the arrange- 
ment of many small difficulties, might surely be 
trusted to do the rest. 

In the Red Sea the weather was very hot. Ladies 
began to appear on deck in light muslins and cottons 
(which would doubtless lose their creases after being 
worn a day or two). The time for sleep grew longer 
in the afternoon, and the tramp before dinner was 
proportionately shorter. Old voyagers to India ac- 
cepted the climatic conditions very contentedly, and 
spoke to each other with reminiscent shudders of the 
cold which they had escaped at home. Even at Aden, 
where the heat was excessive, it was understood that 
a fog in London would have been very much worse. 

The pause at Aden was as difficult to fill up as an 
hour of waiting at a railway station. There was a 
sense of delay because the ship’s engines had ceased 
to beat. Passengers loitered on the decks and, looking 
at the blistering little town set among the sands of 
the barren rock, congratulated themselves that they 
did not live there. It was Sunday, and they won- 
dered what the folk ashore were doing. The clang 
of a church bell reached them across the water, and 


122 Snow upon the Desert 

the homely sound was grateful and pleasant to the 
ear. The inhabitant of the British Isles has a relig- 
ion which is as strong, as solid, and as portable as the 
other impedimenta of his frequent voyaging. He 
carries it about with him as Easterns of old used to 
carry mule-loads of earth, loving the very soil of the 
country to which it belonged. Where an Englishman 
goes he takes his wife and his Prayer Book, and he 
loves both because they are British, and because they 
are his. 

There was to be Morning Prayer on board the * ‘Bo- 
livia” as soon as fire drill was over. Men and women 
voyaging for the first time endeavored to find an 
interest in watching a long row of lean men in white 
trousers who pattered over the ship’s deck in com- 
pany with a fire hose. They were narrow-chested 
men, very unequal in size, and with yellow-brown 
faces, and they stood in a line while an officer, alert, 
neat, immaculately clean, in a white uniform and 
brass buttons, went down the long row book in hand. 
Drill was on the instant. The doctor took a rapid 
look at the men. A steward waited near by, the 
tongue of a brass bell held in his hand, ready to an- 
nounce Morning Prayer down below. 

After a contemplative silence Mrs. Antrobus ob- 
served : “I see an enormous difference between people 
who go to church and those who attend divine ser- 
vice. 5 9 

“I much prefer those who go to church,” said 


123 


Snow upon the Desert 

Captain Bethel stoutly, ‘‘although I should be very 
sorry to have to say where the difference lies. The 
only thing I stipulate for in church is that I shall 
not sit next a fervent singer or a woman who clanks 
chains.” 

‘ ‘ A retired Indian officer always sings a bar behind 
the choir,” observed Herky. “It has an extraor- 
dinarily reverent sound.” 

“I always admire,” said Major Eden, “the Eng- 
lish woman resolutely going to church in a foreign 
country. Everyone else may have been to mass at 
some early hour, but at eleven o’clock, Prayer Book 
in hand, she always has the air of being the only per- 
son with any sense of the decencies of religion.” 

“I love the Englishwoman abroad,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus. “She has never grown accustomed to being 
out of England, and is as timid as a child away from 
its nurse.” 

“You see,” said Major Eden, smiling, “outside of 
England everyone is very wicked. It is hardly possi- 
ble to speak to a foreigner without becoming con- 
taminated.” 

“And the continental breakfast, so called, is an 
evil beginning to a day,” finished Mrs. Antrobus 
gaily. “Early morning coffee and a dust-cloak are 
an Englishwoman’s idea of foreign travel. If she 
were going to live in Siberia she would still have a 
gray alpaca dust-cloak, and would still believe that 


124 Snow upon the Desert 

to drink coffee in one’s room constitutes the freedom 
of foreign life.” 

* 4 What is the exact meaning of the ritual that some 
English ladies observe,” asked Digby, “which causes 
them to march out of an hotel dining-room with an 
orange held well in front of them? They do it even 
on hoard this ship.” 

“Oh, it’s a most interesting custom, and charged 
with significance!” Mrs. Antrobus cried. “The 
orange is held in front of her because she is not 
stealing, and it goes to her room with her because a 
woman loves to have those little things which are 
* included.’ Tout compris sets her soul at rest.” 

“She can’t very well eat an orange in the middle 
of the night.” 

“No, but she likes to know that it is there!” 

“And wherever she is she will still grasp a little 
bag tightly,” Digby said, “which is such an odd 
thing to do, for, of course, an English man or woman 
never values money unless it is in the form of pounds, 
shillings, and pence. The sole reason we are so ex- 
travagant in India is because we cannot respect a 
rupee.” 

Six bells sounded, the steward released the tongue 
of his bell and clanged it loudly. 

“Some of the ladies have even put on their best 
hats,” murmured Mrs. Antrobus, watching them in 
her detached way as they filed past her. 

“It is British, and I like it,” said Digby. 


Snow upon the Desert 125 

Mrs. Antrobus looked at him in a contemplative 
manner. “I believe,” she said to herself, “that he 
is sufficiently British even to be allowed to elope with 
a girl from school. Let us hope so. I only wish Sir 
Hercules would write or telegraph. I cannot under- 
stand there being no message for either of them at 
Aden.” 

The Captain, a wheezy reader, took up his position 
bareheaded, rotund, behind a gigantic Prayer Book 
placed upon a cushion covered with a Union Jack. 
A steward with silky hair and a mustache played the 
harmonium, and men and women, in the low-ceilinged 
saloon with its fluttering electric fans, sat on revolv- 
ing chairs at the tables where they were wont to eat 
their meals, and prayed according to their needs, and 
praised also, with a queer mixture of home sentiment 
and heavenly thoughts. 

“A day’s march nearer home,” sang the impro- 
vised choir, probably because it was the most inappro- 
priate hymn in the book. 

“We ought to sing ‘ A day’s run further out,’ ” 
said the third officer, who was inclined to be witty 
unless checked by his superiors. 

Under the wheeling electric fans the worshipers 
sang with grave faces. There were cries of boat- 
men outside; the East was in full view at last, hills 
iron- jagged and sharp rose up before them, keeping 
gu^trd over the first British port in a great Empire. 


126 Snow upon the Desert 

The congregation in the 1 1 Bolivia ’ 7 sang on, with 
their backs to the port-holes and the sun. 

A collection in silver is part of our orthodoxy. 
We can hardly pray without subscribing a shilling, 
and charity, being an acquired virtue and difficult, 
is the one most constantly attained to by our good 
Britisher. He puts his hand in his pocket where 
another man will put his on his sword and, tender- 
ness being the essential part of him, he conceals it 
and the charity which is its expression under a 
pathetically transparent covering and acknowledges 
a desire to “give what is customary.’ ’ 

He looks up the long line of figures in a subscrip- 
tion list and makes his own correspond as nearly 
as possible to those that appear at the top, and he 
puts a rupee into a meat-plate covered with a dinner- 
napkin as he files out from aboard-ship service in a 
saloon, or, if he gives a sovereign, he slips it under 
the napkin. 

The “Bolivia” was in the Arabian Sea, which is 
like a liquid opal in calm weather. Sky and sea were 
made up of pinks and blues and grays, with green 
shadows in them. Some flying-fish fluttering out of 
the unknown disturbed its surface for a time ; other- 
wise all was sweet and plaintive and calm as the 
ship with her grim hull churned her way through the 
solitude, a black speck in the gem-like waters. 

Bombay was almost in sight. The young men of 
the smoking-room were adding up how much they 


Snow upon the Desert 127 

had lost or won during the past fortnight at Bridge. 
The question of whether the deck-steward need be 
tipped was being discussed by those who had borne 
the voyage well. Ladies passionately sorting and 
arranging their luggage had to decide which boxes 
would have to go forward and which might be left 
behind to follow later. Farewells were imminent, 
and, at meal-times, addresses were written on the 
backs of wine-cards and exchanged among those who 
hoped to meet again. Topaz, the bath-man, had begun 
to linger in the alleyways outside the cabin doors in 
case he might be forgotten in the matter of back- 
sheesh, and the barman was having a busy time re- 
ceiving payment for wine bills. A shortage of small 
change was being felt by everyone. The quarter- 
master went about with pieces of tarry string in his 
mouth, and was efficient in tying up deck-chairs. 
Captain Baird was telling his passengers with kindly 
sincerity that he was sorry the voyage was over. And 
there were some on board his ship who echoed his 
sentiments, feeling perhaps that an ocean voyage is 
one of the few excursions left where trouble is power- 
less to overtake one. 

— “ Unless you bring it upon yourself,” said Cap- 
tain Baird literally, * ‘ or there is a Marconi telegraph 
station on board — a thing I detest.” 

“One used to have an idea,” said Mrs. Antrobus, 
“that on board ship women quarreled all day long. 


128 Snow upon the Desert 

Are we becoming better-tempered and more good- 
natured than we used to be?” 

“ Believe me, my dear lady,” said the Captain, 
“I am amazed at you sometimes. I do not know 
wbat has come over tlj£ world of women of late years. 
They do not even try to conceal their ages, as a rule. 
And what are we men to work upon when they cease 
to hate each other because of some superiority in 
dress or jewels? Why, bless me, what are we to do 
when a wife is not even to be consoled by the present 
of a bracelet or a new bonnet?” 

‘‘We seem to have emerged too suddenly from 
childhood,” said Mrs. Antrobus, “when those things 
were given to us in easy payments.” 

“But, observe,” said the Captain, “it is not only 
that women have ceased to care very greatly about 
trinkets and dress, but they have ceased to bother 
their heads about the men who used to supply them. 
Men as a race are not all heroes now. That is bad, 
you know — very bad ! Mrs. Antrobus, I have nieces 
at home who prefer a run with the beagles to flirting, 
and a typewriting office to a home. And they are 
good girls, too,” he finished, “content to work for 
themselves if they cannot get the right man to work 
for them.” 

“Fortunately, there is generally one ‘right man’ 
in a woman’s life.” 

“I was brought up in the old days,” said Captain 


Snow upon the Desert 129 

Baird, “when marriage was not only the aim of a 
woman’s existence, but in some sort her religion.” 

“Those were the women whom you called good 
wives ? ’ ’ 

“Yes, hut then we never considered the women’s 
point of view,” said the Captain, twinkling, “it’s a 
modern innovation, and regrettable.” 

* ‘ Is the end of us to he a harem or a seat in Parlia- 
ment ? ’ ’ said Mrs. Antrobus. ‘ ‘ I have been chaperon- 
ing a young girl on this voyage. Where will she be 
fifty years hence?” 

“Just where she likes to put herself,” said the 
Captain. “But remember she is not going to win 
her place by force; no one is going to win except 
the wheedling woman.” 

‘ ‘ The old Delilah ! ’ ’ laughed Mrs. Antrobus. ‘ ‘ But 
we should all be Delilahs if there were more giants 
about. The difficulty is to find Samsons!” 

She was always making remarks which shocked 
respectable people. 

The long line of buildings in Bombay Harbor was 
visible now. With a pair of field-glasses Herky was 
trying to catch the first glimpse of her father’s fig- 
ure on the quay. Excitement made her graver than 
usual, but bright color was in her cheeks. 

“Probably he has sent Colonel Goddard down to 
meet you. I see him there,” said Digby, when she 
had raked the quay in vain. 

“Herky, darling,” said the old soldier when he 


130 Snow upon the Desert 

had come on board the ship and kissed her and drawn 
her aside from the others, “I am the bearer of bad 
news, and it is no use trying to break it gently to 
you; the shock must be horrible, and, if it was my- 
self, I should like to be told at once. Your father 
is dead ! ’ ’ 


Chapter VIII 


T HEY were in the train now — a little company 
of friends who would travel together until an 
important junction was reached. There Major Eden 
would begin a long hot journey on the southern line 
of railway, and Mrs. Antrobus would be borne in 
another direction. Colonel Goddard was sure that 
the ladies would like a carriage to themselves, and 
all through the glaring hot day the two friends sat, 
hardly talking to one another until it came to the 
moment of farewell. 

“You will have your aunt,” Mrs. Antrobus said 
at last, and her voice as well as her method of 
consolation seemed flat even to herself. “Colonel 
Goddard says she is still at Government House. I 
hope, my dear, she will be kind to you, I hope she 
will be kind. I will come to you at a moment’s 
notice if you want me. I would come now, but 
Jack’s telegram tells me to push on; besides, one 
must remember that Mrs. Irby doesn’t know me, 
I might be dreadfully in the way.” 

“Please come as soon as you can.” 

“Oh, my dear, I will come if I am dead!” 

They were sitting side by side in the slowly mov- 
131 


132 


Snow upon the Desert 

ing train; the shuttered windows behind them, and 
the landscape passing like a long gray picture 
stretched on a ribbon. 

Mrs. Antrobus said suddenly, “I want to tell you 
something. ’ ’ 

She spoke with decision, yet now there was a 
pause, and when she began again it was with diffi- 
culty, like a woman who searches for the right word 
before she uses it. 

Mrs. Antrobus had learned to stand outside life, 
and to take a detached view of it and of herself also. 
It struck her now quite suddenly that she was coming 
to close quarters again with the woman whom she had 
ceased to know, and for whom she had perhaps 
ceased to be responsible. The shock of the encounter 
banished that protective cynicism which is the de- 
fense and the safeguard of those who have suffered 
through their own fault. 

Life has often been compared to an arena down 
into which men and women have to go and fight. 
Some of them conquer and are carried in triumph 
round it, and some of them die unconquered, and 
some of them are simply beaten, and limping back 
to a chair among the audience they say, “I will 
look on now.” Mrs. Antrobus had looked on, even 
at herself, with a splendid irresponsibility. She had 
learned to take things as they come. And the things 
had not all been bad. Her good health and fine 
physique had helped her. Life, she found, is a pos- 


Snow upon the Desert 133 

session worth having for those whose limbs can still 
be directed by the mind’s impulse, and whose clear 
blood runs quickly on its circuit. Sport is good; to 
ride first and to ride straight are good. To be the 
most beautiful woman in the room at a ball gives a 
certain sense of command. Mrs. Antrobus danced 
with whom she pleased. It would have been difficult 
perhaps to make her realize that there are women 
who wait and hope to be asked to dance, and who are 
sometimes disappointed. 

“You will have to make your own choice in every- 
thing now,” she began. Even in making a confes- 
sion it was impossible to think of her flinching. Yet 
her voice was blunter than usual when she said, “I 
would choose the best if I were you.” 

“But I have never chosen anything in my life,” 
the poor child said. “That sounds very helpless, 
doesn ’t it f ” 

“In India,” Mrs. Antrobus went on, “the second 
best is not good. In England there are heaps of 
good second bests, and any number of compensations. 
Oh, and there are interests, too, such as we almost 
forget about out in India! The artistic woman has 
her studio, the church-worker has her parish, the 
musician has her concerts, the writer has her literary 
society and her plays, the stay-at-home woman has 
her linen cupboards and her old servants. But in 
India a man works and a woman goes with him — 
that is all. 


134 Snow upon the Desert 

“When we reduce to two the great factors of life 
they become too weighty, too urgent. At home if a 
married couple do not get on very well there are 
many distractions for them both. Marriage as an 
everyday experiment is becoming not less uncertain, 
perhaps, to the experimentalists, but less important. 
Just think of it; happiness is possible even where 
love is proved a failure. That is wrong, and per- 
verted perhaps, but it is so. But in India we go 
into exile with the man who works; there is nothing 
else. Even the children hardly count ; we send them 
home, and they grow up strangers to us. And work 
is a crushing thing sometimes. It comes first; it 
must come first. A man’s whole ambition is bound 
up in it, and his duty too. I do not complain about 
it. The man and his work are fine things; they 
deserve their reward. 

“And there is the man’s wife. We go back 
to primitive conditions out here, living a nomadic 
life, and unable even to touch the things which count 
for much in England. The woman’s sphere in India, 
whether she likes it or not, is her home. It is a 
paradise sometimes — and sometimes it is not. It is 
always shifting. There are no old associations in 
India; no old servants whom we have known when 
we were children; no sweet-smelling linen cupboards 
with their dear orderly rows of lavender-scented fine 
sheets; no oak-paneled rooms, polished by genera- 
tions of good housemaids. The very bushes in the 


135 


Snow upon the Desert 

garden here were planted by ‘the last people.’ The 
furniture within doors can be traced through many 
bungalows.” 

“I am going to say something,” her young friend 
said, “which has often been said before. But I 
suppose it is the people with whom one lives who 
really make a difference between a house and a 
home. If I had you always with me ” 

“Most people would not think me a particularly 
good companion for you! Oh, there is truth in 
much that they say, and you are bound to hear it 
some time or other. I have flirted with half the 
men in India, I am up to my eyes in debt, and you 
will be told that I have not been a particularly good 
angel to anyone.” 

Her voice had a new inflection in it, and she began 
to speak as though pleading at some bar of justice — 
the impeccable, implacable bar of youth, with its 
stainless records and its horribly just decrees. 

“Listen to me,” she cried, “I want to say some- 
thing to you in my own defense. If I have not 
always been what is picturesquely called a good 
angel to anyone, yet some people have brought their 
troubles to me, and I have listened, and they have 
said that that has helped them a little. I do not 
know if that equalizes things at all, or atones for 
any of my faults or wipes them out. Ask anyone 
to tell you the story of Harry Nicholson.” 


136 Snow upon the Desert 

Words had become so difficult now that it seemed 
cruelty to allow her to speak. 

1 1 Please do not tell me anything.’ ’ 

“ Thank you,” said Mrs. Anthrobus. 

All the world knew her story. 

. . . There was a young man, beloved both of the 
gods and of men, with whom all things went well. 
He was born under a lucky star, and no one envied 
him his luck. When he gained the Victoria Cross he 
had probably more letters and telegrams of congrat- 
ulation than any other man had had in like circum- 
stance. The Cross was well won and well worn. Of 
course, he was proud of it, but in a manner so im- 
personal that modesty itself could hardly have borne 
the honour more gracefully. 

“One of the men whom I am proud to have in 
the Army,” the King said to an old friend of his 
when he had fixed the decoration upon the stripling 
in scarlet and gold. 

He met Mrs. Antrobus at Simla and loved her, 
and died by his own hand, and no one ever forgave 
her because they said she stripped him of his honor 
first before he died. 

It all happened when some Hill tribes beyond 
Peshawar were giving trouble. An expedition 
against them would cost money, and had been put 
off too long. 

Now justice, even at some expense, was to be 
meted out to them, and it was matter of common 


137 


Snow upon the Desert 

knowledge that the much-coveted command was to 
be given to Nicholson. The soldiers in India envied 
him, for it was not often in these peacefully gov- 
erned days that such an opportunity for distinction 
presented itself. Nicholson was the man for the 
post, and it was hardly grudged him, even while the 
chance for distinction was envied. He knew every 
inch of the country, and almost every dialect that 
was spoken on the North-West Frontier. He de- 
served his luck, and such a chance comes only once in 
a lifetime. The Commander-in-Chief sent for him to 
Simla, and at Simla he met Mrs. Antrobus. 

Jack Antrobus was drinking more than was good 
for him, or for those about him, and Mrs. Antrobus ’s 
little girl had died. By all that was right, by all that 
was fitting even, she should have remained indoors 
and mourned for the child. She should have sat all 
day during the rains, in the bungalow up in the Hills, 
and looked out on a white wall of mist, and heard the 
dripping of the trees, and seen the monkeys swinging 
themselves from the wet boughs. And at night- 
time when the jackals prowled eerily about the house, 
and Colonel Antrobus was at his mess or the club, 
a little fire might have been lighted for the sake of 
warmth and company, and with her thoughts to 
cheer her in the empty house she might have gazed 
into the fire, her aching arms folded in front of her 
for at least six decent months. It was unpardonable 
that she had not done so. 


138 Snow upon the Desert 

She knew quite well what was being said of her, 
and sobbing over a child’s cot she vowed that for 
a lesser grief she might have mourned and lived 
alone with it, but the death of her child could not 
be even called back to her mind. 

Mrs. Antrobus danced gaily and flirted recklessly. 
That, in its net result, might well have brought 
another woman to a sense of responsibility or even 
of danger. But Mrs. Antrobus had long ago ceased 
to stop to think of danger. The consequence of an 
act was never even considered by her. She behaved 
scandalously, and Harry Nicholson refused to be 
scandalized. He was a chivalrous man who rever- 
enced while he loved. His faith in her was the best 
thing then that she had. Jack Antrobus had never 
reverenced anything in his life, and at a critical 
moment his wife was being offered the one thing 
which might serve to restore her self-esteem. 

Mrs. Antrobus saw this, and laughed harshly at 
the thought — she laughed often in those feverish, 
mad days and wept not at all. “Self-esteem!” she 
cried, her mind in revolt against the conventional 
phrase, and it seemed as though she snapped her 
fingers straight in the face of the smiling, self-satis- 
fied little god. “Self-esteem — the dower of any prig 
whose vanity demands the admiration of her own 
little intellect or her own meager soul! The heri- 
tage of plain women who have nothing else to live 
for! Oh, if it were not so cheap, or held so dear, I 


Snow upon the Desert 139 

might accept at its proper value their much-lauded 
self-esteem. Why should we esteem ourselves? It 
is only a form of spiritual conceit, a burden to our- 
selves, a bore to other people. I might sit in a back 
parlor and mend Jack’s socks and buy my self- 
esteem to-morrow. But the purchase would be too 
expensive a one. Ye gods! To think of being quiet 
and having time for thought!” 

Yet there came a night when, because it was Sun- 
day evening and Mrs. Antrobus was tired, and be- 
cause Sunday casts a spell over feverish spirits, her 
mad mood left her for a while. After all, why not 
accept Jack as he was and let the others go ? 

“Perhaps I ought to be a more submissive wom- 
an,” thought Mrs. Antrobus. 

But what was the logical meaning of submission? 
By what queer twist of reason was it possible for one 
human being to claim exclusive rights over another? 
No, no ! That was not the right mood for this Sun- 
day evening with its echo of old hymns and prayers 
which was to be the beginning of a less tempestuous 
life. The analyzed logic of things is of very little 
help in daily life. Mrs. Antrobus had once fallen 
into the mistake of thinking, and it had ended in 
confusion. Spontaneous action, unconsidered speech ; 
these did far less harm than thinking a thing out. 
To think meant to calculate : to calculate meant per- 
fect equation, a balanced mind, an equal division of 
things, the fairness of human life. Submission was 


140 Snow upon the Desert 

not fair, but Mrs. Antrobus meant to submit, where- 
fore why make calculations which were of no use? 

Colonel Antrobus had been playing tennis at a 
neighboring bungalow just below their own on the 
wooded hillside. She could hear him come in now 
and fling his racket on the table and shout to his 
bearer for a whisky peg. She endeavored to attune 
her mind to that of the woman who admires physical 
strength. Jack was a robust, big man. It was good, 
she told herself, “to hear his manly tread about the 
place, and his strong voice shouting his orders. ’ ’ She 
went and sat down beside him in the veranda — a 
beautiful woman in muslin attire, scrupulously fresh 
and clean, while her husband flung his legs over the 
wings of his chair. 

“Had a nice game, Jack?’’ 

“First rate. I weighed myself down at Inveraile 
just now, and I’ve lost three pounds, and haven’t a 
dry thing on me.” 

His shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, showed an ex- 
panse of bronzed throat and neck, a loose tweed coat 
had his discarded necktie hanging from one of the 
pockets, while his hair was divided into streaks on 
his hot forehead. He drank his whisky and soda and 
asked her what she had been up to. 

“I believe I have been thinking, Jack.” 

“I don’t call that doing anything!” 

“And making plans, too.” 

“What plans?” He raised his head and looked 


141 


Snow upon the Desert 

sharply at her for a minute, for he was a man who 
hated a break in the comfortable routine of life. 

“I have been thinking we have hardly seen any- 
thing of each other lately,’ ’ she went on, 4 ‘and we 
have not much chance of doing so here. Let us break 
all our engagements and ride out together, just you 
and I, to Narkanda, and stay in the bungalow there, 
and play at being Darby and Joan.” 

“I can’t come to-morrow,” he said, “I have prom- 
ised to play tennis again.” 

“Oh, I have promised to do half a dozen things, 
too!” she replied, smiling. The smile suited her as 
her dress did, and, like it, was a pretty thing put on 
for an occasion and worn charmingly. “But I mean 
to leave them all and have a little honeymoon with 
you.” 

“We should find Narkanda pretty uncomfortable,” 
responded Jack dubiously. “We had far better stay 
at home, where we can have our own things about 
us.” 

She slipped her cool hand into his hot one. “I 
really wish it.” 

“You women like such amazingly uncomfortable 
things,” he said. “We should not get a thing fit to 
eat, and, after all, we are paying a good bit for this 
bungalow. Why cannot you be contented here?” 

“I have an excellent time,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 
She still spoke playfully. “I almost think it would 
he a pleasure to be a little bit dull sometimes.” 


142 Snow upon the Desert 

“You sit up too late,” he said with easy kindness. 

“And get up too early,” she responded with a 
laugh. “But that is because I do not sleep very 
well.” 

“I always manage to sleep all right,” said he. 

“When I wake up I try not to think,” his wife 
went on, “and that is rather cowardly, isn’t it? I 
think if you and I were to go away together, Jack, I 
might even dare to remember sometimes. ’ ’ 

4 4 That won ’t do you a mite of good, ’ ’ he said, not 
unkindly. 

4 ‘Jack, take me away, wherever you like, and let 
us forget parties and the din of bands, and the sound 
of feet dancing through the lighted nights.” 

4 4 Look here, old girl, don’t get morbid!” said Jack. 
He and his wife got on very comfortably together as 
a rule, he thought, and he was sorry she was in the 
blues. 

He rose and stretched himself, and shouted in Hin- 
dustani to his bearer to take hot water to his room. 

4 4 1 hope we ain ’t doing anything to-night. ’ ’ 

“No,” she replied, “I really believe we are to be 
quite alone.” 

“Good business!” said Jack, as he went off to have 
his bath. “These late hours we have been keeping 
lately do not suit me. ’ ’ 

He slept after dinner, and Mrs. Antrobus wrote 
some notes, then roused her husband, lest he should 


Snow upon the Desert 143 

get chilly after the fire had burned itself out, and 
went to bed. 

It was an evening, she thought, such as hundreds 
of married couples spend nightly together. 

“And there are thousands of novels written every 
year, ” she said to herself, “depicting love-scenes 
which lead up to this.” 

She scandalized Simla during the week that fol- 
lowed by acting in a play full of emotional scenes. 

And now the play was over, the audience had 
clapped and shouted their applause, and Mrs. An- 
trobus, exhausted and triumphant, had come forward 
into the hot glare of the footlights once more, and 
received a homage of flowers, and the unstinted 
plaudits of men who were saying to themselves, “I 
am glad it is not my wife.” Her performance had 
been far too dramatic, far too realistic, and even those 
who had paid it the tribute of tears were only dimly 
guessing at the hidden cause of their emotion. 

She refused all offers of supper or of parties. She 
must be alone and far away from compliments and 
applause until some fire within her had burnt itself 
out and her heart was better under control. A string 
band was playing, and she said under her breath, 
“Oh, if only it would stop, if only it would stop!” 
She blamed the band and the valse it was playing 
for something riotous and confusing within her which 
had got almost beyond her control. The excitement 
of the performance which was just over tingled in 


144 Snow upon the Desert 

her; her hands were cold, and her head felt on fire. 
She must get out of reach of the sound of the band 
and away from the hot air of the theater. Why 
should they choose to play to-night a valse that, while 
it set feet dancing, was saying in every note of it 
“Good-bye”? There was no safety except in flight 
away from the music and the clapping of hands. 

She went home without saying “Good night,” but 
the bungalow with its constraining walls and com- 
monplace furniture matched too badly her mood, and 
she turned aside at the door and passed into the 
moonlit garden, the sumptuous stage-dress which she 
had worn trailing behind her on the grass, and the 
heavy cloak hanging from her shoulders. Her cheeks 
were bright wdth theatrical rouge, and her eyes, with 
some pigment on the lashes, looked unearthly and 
large in the moonlight. A long period of unexpressed 
and restrained emotion had found outlet in the pas- 
sion of acting. In that world she had lived and 
triumphed, and in that world at least she stood on an 
eminence. To-night she no longer fought a battle 
with the world, but defied it. 

Then on a sudden the fire burned out, the fever left 
her. She felt small and lonely in the garden, with 
its tall fir trees, grim and solemn about her. Far 
away the noisy clapping and applause of the Simla 
theatre had died out. The strain of impersonating 
another’s individuality was over; the uncaring stars 
overhead twinkled mischievously at her, and the old 


Snow upon the Desert 145 

unexplained fear came upon her, causing her to 
crouch underneath the fir trees. 

“I can’t hear it,” she sobbed. “I cannot bear it.” 
She sank down on a seat at the bottom of the garden 
and found someone there to comfort her. 

‘ 4 1 sit here at night and watch your window till the 
light is out,” Harry Nicholson said, “and then 1 
know you are asleep and at peace.” 

“But I am never at peace,” she cried. “All my 
life I beat my hands against stone walls until they 
are bruised and my strength is gone.” 

1 ‘ Poor hands ! ” he said, and took them between his 
own. 

‘ 1 Harry, Harry, I am so unhappy ! ’ ’ she cried. 

He soothed and comforted her, and the tears that 
should have been shed long ago came in torrents now. 
The piteous traces of paint and powder were nearly 
washed away, and, as rain destroys a flower, her face 
was wrecked by tears. 

The moon shone brilliantly overhead and the cries 
of jackals came from the hillside. Down in the road 
below they could hear the soft padding of the feet of 
jampanis racing homeward with rickshaws; and the 
“Good nights” of men and women returning from 
supper after the play sounded like voices not of their 
world at all. What had these happy people in con- 
nection with the man and the woman sitting together 
on the wooden bench in the black shadow of a pine 


146 Snow upon the Desert 

tree up here in the quiet garden, and with tragedy 
pressing close upon them ? 

The moonlight and the quiet garden held nothing 
hut a very agony of farewell. Any day now, the 
Frontier expedition would start, and he, of course, 
would get the command to go with it. 

“ Don’t go,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

And the next day Harry Nicholson sent in his 
papers. 

There is a club-house up among the Hills, some 
miles from the Mall at Simla, where youths and 
maidens assemble for tea, and where men have the 
privilege of dining and sleeping. Everyone British- 
born who has traveled far knows a similar type of 
club-house all the world over. They are places very 
English in their furnishings, rather sumptuous in 
the matter of afternoon tea, and they provide an 
easy ride or drive from some neighboring center — 
a garrison station or some busy town. It was up here 
one evening that an old friend of Harry Nicholson’s 
came to look for him. ‘ 4 He can ’t stand much more, ’ 9 
this man said to himself. “I know the look on a 
man’s face when it’s all up with him. I shall tell 
him,” thought his friend, “because it is necessary 
that a young man’s face should not look so tragic as 
his does, that nothing had been actually settled about 
giving him the command of the expedition. And, 
after all, who knows that Mrs. Antrobus told him to 
stay?” 


147 


Snow upon the Desert 

He would ride out to the tea-house whither 
Nicholson had ridden in the afternoon, and where 
he was too fond of spending evenings alone, and 
would keep him company there, because it is not well 
to leave a man alone who has not slept for some 
nights and whose face shows haggard lines upon it. 

He heard that the young man had gone for a walk 
on the hillside, and it was on the hillside he found 
him, with his face turned up to the sky and a wound 
above the temples, which his old friend covered 
hastily and with unsteady hands. 

4 ‘So this is the end of it,” he said; “it is a great 
pity!” 

When Mrs. Antrobus came hack to Simla from a 
shooting expedition the following year she never 
made any bitter speeches, nor acted wildly, nor beat 
despairing hands against stone walls. Tragedy was 
over for her. She was merely gay and amusing, and 
gay and amusing she remained. Only the tuft of 
white hair gave to her beauty a suggestion that per- 
haps, once long ago, she must have received some 
heavy blow which had taken the color out of the 
black lock just above her eyes. 

. . . “When other people suffer,” she was saying, 
and her voice, although it was low, was distinctly 
audible above the sound of the train, while the land- 
scape on its long gray ribbon went slowly past them, 
scrub-covered and bare — “when other women suffer” 
— she still spoke haltingly and with difficulty 


148 Snow upon the Desert 

“one is given to understand that it makes them 
tender and good. It made me cruel. Perhaps I had 
the wrong teacher. It is not everyone who can learn 
patiently from adversity. I said it always has been 
women who have suffered most. I said men get over 
things, and perhaps they do; perhaps it is as well 
that they should. But it is rather ridiculous to say 
that they can take good care of themselves. ’ ’ 

Loyal girlhood refused to listen. “No one could 
help loving you,” said Herky. 

“I took some trouble to make them do so,” said 
Mrs. Antrobus, in her unsparing way. 

The train began to slow down as it entered a sta- 
tion filled with natives. A Wheeler’s bookstall, a 
couple of Eurasian guards in white topees, walking 
up and down the platform, some fruit-sellers, a 
water-carrier, a group of veiled women with children, 
two or three kitmutgars in white clothing standing 
by the wire-netted door of the refreshment-room, 
made up an old familiar scene to those who have 
traveled in the East before. Brown men washed 
themselves at the station water-pipe, crowds of white- 
robed men were doing nothing at all, and over all 
there were a halo of dust and the peculiar aroma of 
an Indian railway station. 

Mrs. Antrobus ’s bearer and ayah came to the door 
of the carriage, collected the scattered bags and rolls 
of bedding, and laid them on the platform. Major 
Eden came from his compartment farther down the 


149 


Snow upon the Desert 

platform to say “Good-bye/’ and as the train steamed 
slowly out of the station he and Mrs. Antrobus were 
left standing together, and the mist that the setting 
sun makes in India’s dust filled the atmosphere so 
that the two figures formed a blurred picture, almost 
as though one saw it through tears. 

She was silent for a time watching the departing 
train, then she turned and said to him, in a voice 
flat and free from emotion, “Now life begins again. 
It is a pity one has so often to pick it up at some 
horrible railway junction.” 

“I sometimes wonder,” he said, “if we have ever 
got accustomed to railway traveling yet. A long 
journey so often seems to us like a possible crisis, and 
a crisis is like a milestone. We begin to count how 
far we have come and how far we have got to go. 
But don’t do that! It only makes things harder. 
Milestones and time are arbitrary things. Don’t let 
us pay any attention to them.” 

“Do not let us trouble about anything,” said Mrs. 
Antrobus, in the same flat, dull voice. 

The minor things of life seemed out of proportion 
to-day and insistent. The loss of a small bag was 
of no great importance. Nor yet was the fact that 
a native kitmutgar was slow in bringing dinner to 
the dark refreshment-room ; but Mrs. Antrobus, 
roused from her gazing after the train, and com- 
pelled to action of a trivial sort, found herself in- 
commoded beyond common by these trifles. She 


150 Snow upon the Desert 

pleaded fatigue as the cause of her mental dis- 
turbance. 

She and Major Eden would dine together, and 
his train would leave two or three hours after hers 
had started. They sat side by side in the lamp-lit 
refreshment room, with its dusty punkahs and its 
barefooted servants, with their thin frames and 
tightly buttoned white cotton dresses, waiting upon 
them. By the light of a smoky lamp they ate the 
pale-colored soup which a train journey in India 
entails on travelers, and finished their dinner with 
some inevitable caramel pudding. To refuse to dine 
would have been an act obtruding itself too sharply 
upon their present mood. Better submit to the minor 
things of life than trouble to avoid them. 

“Need it be a crisis ?” Mrs. Antrobus was saying 
to herself — ‘ ‘ need it be a crisis ? ’ ’ 

The voyage was safely over, and in ministering to 
her young friend ’s grief a difficulty never ac- 
knowledged had been put on one side. Now it faced 
her again insistently. A wiser woman would no 
doubt have managed to evade a crisis. But Mrs. 
Antrobus was seldom wise. Why had she not so ar- 
ranged matters as to avoid a farewell scene? Good- 
byes were best said amid the safety of numbers. 
Even on board ship, where Major Eden had been 
her constant companion, she had had the society of 
fellow-passengers. Here in this crowded native rail- 
way station, with its noise and its clamor, compan- 


Snow upon the Desert 151 

ionship had lost its proper value. It was too neces- 
sary in this land where no one feels more solitary 
than an Englishwoman alone. Fatigue added to her 
weakness, and with weakness the need for another’s 
strength. More than anything else in the world she 
wanted to place herself and everything she had in his 
hands — only to be looked after, to be taken care of — 
to have the crowds kept from her as she walked 
through the railway station. 

In London she had often laughed to herself, realiz- 
ing that a man’s idea of protecting a woman is to 
take her elbow as they cross a crowded street to- 
gether, while he looks over her head to see if cabs or 
omnibuses are coming. To-night she longed for the 
touch of his hand upon her arm. 

If only Jack had come to the junction to meet her ! 

It was part of his pride in her that she was always 
perfectly able to look after herself, and he would have 
laughed at the idea of her requiring protection. 

“Are you sure you have everything you want?” 

Major Eden lingered at the door of the railway 
carriage, while his Pathan bearer arranged every- 
thing skilfully in the carriage, and Mrs. Antrobus’s 
ayah began to unstrap a big roll of green Willesden 
canvas containing bedding. 

“Yes, everything, thank you; do not wait.” 

“Why not?” 

“Because good-byes at the door of a railway car- 
riage are always foolish. They are badly staged af- 


152 Snow upon the Desert 

fairs at the best of times, and the scene-shifter never 
starts the train exactly at the right moment. ’ ’ 

Her attempt at gaiety was too forced to be con- 
vincing, and he hardly attempted to respond to it. 

“I hate your traveling alone,” he said — the in- 
escapable banalities of last words forcing themselves 
upon him. 

“I am not frightened.” 

‘ ‘You will have your ayah in the carriage with 
you?” 

“No, I think I want to be alone, and she will be 
quite near if I want anything. There is a cord of 
communication, is there not ? if anyone wants to mur- 
der me.” 

“I have spoken to the guard,” he said anxiously, 
“about looking after you.” 

‘ ‘ But I am quite accustomed to traveling alone. ’ ’ 

A big moon was flooding the world with light now 
and making the station lamps look poor and yellow 
and commonplace. Vendors of brass offered their 
wares, and natives selling fruit brought baskets again 
and again to the window of the carriage. Major 
Eden sent them off sharply at last with some words 
of Hindustani. There were still a few minutes to 
spare, and the crowd and noise of the platform irri- 
tated him. 

“I will come inside and sit down if you do not 
mind, till the train starts, ’ ’ he said. 

She put out her hand instinctively to close the 


Snow upon the Desert 153 

door, and said, “No;” then withdrew it and let him 
enter and sit on the dusty cushions beside her. 

He had seen the action of her hand and said: “I 
will not say anything to distress you/’ 

“I did not mean to he unkind,” she faltered. 

It had always been so. Rather than be unkind 
Bertha Antrobus had done many foolish things. 

“You will write?” he said at last, feeling the 
moments slipping by. 

“I am a had letter- writer. Besides, it is better to 
forget.” 

“I shall not forget.” 

“All men forget in time.” 

He began to smile again in his half-humorous 
way while his face twitched. “I am still,” he said, 
“only one of a crowd who have made up your ex- 
perience of men.” 

' Almost anything would have caused Mrs. Antrobus 
to lose her self-control to-night. A forgotten bag 
disturbed her. A question about her too evident 
fatigue might have produced a sob. Even the most 
tender-hearted men, she thought, seldom know these 
things, or how to avoid adding the last brick which 
brings down with a crash the bravely standing 
slender edifice which women erect in defense against 
their own weakness. 

“Ah!” she cried out sharply, “why do you wait? 
1 told you to go. If you had left, this would never 
have happened.” For she had buried her face in her 


154 * Snow upon the Desert 

hands, and was weeping with a very tempest of tears. 
Men’s tears, it is allowed, are disarming because they 
weep so seldom. It was years since anyone had seen 
Mrs. Antrohns abandon herself to grief. She put out 
one ungloved hand and held tightly to the cushion of 
the railway carriage to steady herself against the 
sobs which shook her. Her breath came with diffi- 
culty, and tears blunted her features. In the aban- 
donment of her weeping she seemed not so much like 
a woman bowed down as like one who has fallen with 
nerves relaxed and muscles powerless. 

All the things they had never meant to say were 
being poured forth into the few minutes at their 
command. ‘ ‘ Why should you suffer so ? Why should 
you be unhappy?” The pathos of her face with all 
the beauty washed out of it by tears hurried him into 
vehement speech. 4 ‘It isn’t right. It isn’t just.” 

“I must go, I must go,” she said between her 
sobs. “But listen to me. Listen.” In her agita- 
tion it seemed as though she must repeat her words 
twice over in case they should fail to reach his 
understanding without the double emphasis which 
suffering brings. “Do help me, do help me instead 
of hindering me. I am so weak, and the only thing 
for me is to be reckless and to rush on and never 
stop. You have been pretending that you see good 
in me. You have been pretending that I am not 
hard and selfish, with all my illusions and beliefs 
gone long ago. You have been pretending even that 


Snow upon the Desert 155 

I am rather a fine character, and I have been silly 
enough to let this make me happy. But now I only 
ask you to leave me. Oh! don’t you know that you 
must go away?” 

“I shall go if you tell me to go, but I shall always 
be at hand if you want me,” he said. “If ever you 
are in trouble and want me I shall come.” 

“Even if I send for you,” she pleaded, “I do 
not want you to come. Promise me that you will 
not! Promise me that you will say to yourself, 
‘This is only foolishness. Things have not gone well 
with her that day, but they will soon be all right 
again.’ ” 

‘ ‘ I shall come if you send for me, ’ ’ he said 
doggedly. 

“No, no. If the worst happens I will come to you.” 

“Is that a promise?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good-bye, Bertha.” 

“Do not write, and do not make things more 
difficult.” 

The train was starting ; he rose to his feet and left 
the carriage. She could see him for a long while, a 
solitary figure standing under an oil lamp on the 
railway platform, the native crowds all about him, 
and himself in his English clothes a conspicuous 
figure in the throng. 


Chapter IX 


M RS. IRBY was trying to reconcile the genuine 
respect with which she had been brought 
up to treat the inscrutable decrees of Providence 
with a sense of irritation that there is nothing in 
this world so horribly upsetting to “plans” as when 
these decrees are made without due warning. Once 
or twice she reminded herself that Sir Hercules was 
only her half-brother, and that his continued absence 
abroad during the greater part of his life explained 
the fact that he had always been a stranger to her, 
and that, therefore, her sense of personal loss was 
mitigated. Since his appointment as Lieutenant- 
Governor of the River Provinces he had fitted in 
very conveniently with her arrangements for the 
winter, though it must be remembered that it had 
cost her some effort to leave her own comfortable 
home. She had a married daughter whose husband 
was stationed at Lucknow, and a visit to them was 
a thing which Mrs. Irby had long promised herself. 
The Lanes had two delightful babies whom it would 
please their grandmother to fondle and inspect, and 
in the intervals of this pleasant family worship her 
half-brother’s house would provide headquarters. 

156 


Snow upon the Desert 157 

It might suggest itself to thoughtful minds that 
as Mrs. Irby’s plans became more fully developed 
Major Lane may not have shown that alacrity to 
have his mother-in-law spend the winter with them 
which Mrs. Irby had read into his affectionate letters 
home. Already he had begun to suggest that, as the 
bungalow which he and his wife and the children 
occupied was small, Mrs. Irby might be more com- 
fortable at the hotel, where she could have her own 
things about her, and enjoy the quiet of a sitting 
room without the children to disturb her. 

In making arrangements of this sort for other 
people Mrs. Irby often wondered why it was that 
the question of cost was always ignored. Her house 
was let and her unmarried daughter had gone to 
study art in Paris. It was doubtless a matter of 
good taste on the part of her friends and relations 
that she was above the vulgar consideration even of 
sovereigns, “but one does long,” she said, “for one’s 
purse, like one’s house, to have a little rest some- 
times. ’ ’ 

There was a great deal that wanted doing to her 
pleasant country house in Gloucestershire, and new 
curtains and carpets, new wall papers, a kitchen 
range, and, if possible, radiators upstairs cost much 
money. So, even while it was graceful to ignore the 
fact, it filled up the debit side of her account sheet 
disagreeably to be recommended to go to an hotel 


158 Snow upon the Desert 

instead of being invited to spend the winter with her 
own daughter. 

Mrs. Irby was disappointed that her son-in-law did 
not see things in this light, but her brother’s invita- 
tion to Government House had been most timely and 
put everything straight. She would stay with him 
during the year his daughter was at school and really 
be of use to him. She would receive his guests, order 
his household, and write his notes, and, if he seemed 
to wish it, she would remain with him over a Royal 
visit that was impending. 

There is a sense of personal affront which some 
people feel when railway companies do not run trains 
in connection with the route which they propose to 
take. Mrs. Irby was endeavoring to be respectful 
and not to give way to irritation at the overthrow of 
her plans for the winter. 

She tried to be resigned and, failing altogether to 
bring to her feelings that high touch which resigna- 
tion involves, she sought to be philosophical; and, 
failing in that also, she congratulated herself on the 
fact that she had, at least, a comfortable margin to 
her income, and that, after all, the radiators could 
wait till next year. 

The Government House carriage, with its liveries 
of scarlet and gold, and its turbaned and barefooted 
servants, met Miss Lascelles at the station and drove 
her through the cantonment and the broad dusty 
Mall, past bungalows with shady green gardens, till a 


159 


Snow upon the Desert 

stone gateway was reached with sentinels on either 
side of it. The two men in the carriage answered to 
the salute as the carriage swung through the gateway 
and drove past the pleasant lawns so carefully wat- 
ered and tended, and up to the broad steps of the 
big white house. The steps were bordered with pots 
of homely flowers, and in the verandah were the typ- 
ical accompaniments of English life. Carpets were 
spread on the stone floor, with long chairs dotted 
here and there and tables covered with magazines and 
English novels. Some red chuprassies rose to their 
feet and salaamed as the carriage drove up. The 
whole scene was one of brightness, of brilliance al- 
most, yet not a week before the man who had reigned 
there had died and left it. 

In the drawing-room were windows hung with 
delicate-colored curtains and gay with embroidered 
screens and chintz-covered sofas and chairs. Outside 
in the vestibule was a table littered with English 
papers, and beyond was the A.D.C.’s room leading 
on to the compound, with some visitors’ tents still 
standing in it. Everything had an air of hospitality 
about it — the open door set wide for every comer, 
the luxurious long chairs in the veranda, the at- 
tendant servants, and the white tents serving as an 
annex for a house that always overflowed with guests. 

There was tea on a round table near the drawing- 
room window. A cool breeze blew through the room 
and wafted some light muslin curtains up almost to 


160 Snow upon the Desert 

the ceiling, as the door opened, and a small dusty 
passenger in black entered the room. Her aunt rose 
to meet her and gave her the caress which a young 
girl in trouble would expect from a kind aunt. She 
held one of her niece’s hands within her own, but, 
being a woman not given to demonstrative affection, 
the clasping hand had a certain awkwardness about 
it, suggestive rather of restraint than of comfort. 
In her own mind she was dutifully seeking for some 
phrase with pious intention in it, which might prove 
consolatory. 

“He is happier where he is,” said Mrs. Irby. 

“ If he had lived we should both have been happy, ’ ’ 
her niece replied. 

“He isn’t really gone,” faltered the elder woman, 
trying to remember words of comfort which she had 
read in little books bound in white with gold letters 
on them. 

“I think that is what makes me so solitary,” the 
girl replied. “I think he is here, and yet I cannot 
touch his hand, nor hear the sound of his voice. ’ ’ 

“He knows you want him,” said Mrs. Irby, who 
knew how much there would have to he discussed and 
talked over in the way of business on the morrow, 
and who meant to give up the whole of the first even- 
ing at least to comforting and consoling her niece. 

“That would distress him very much.” 

“If he were to enter the room now ” began 

Mrs. Irby, and was released from the difficulty of 


161 


Snow upon the Desert 

finishing her sentence by an interruption from the 
orphan, whose tearless eyes she considered unnatural. 

“If he were to enter the room now,” she said, “I 
should hear him coming downstairs with the little 
rattle of his watchchain against my mother’s locket. 
I want him in his old gray suit of clothes, and I want 
to sit with my hand in his.” 

“Schools,” said Mrs. Irby to herself, “are apt to 
make girls a little self-opinionated.” Nevertheless, 
she forgave her niece, remembering how upset she 
must feel, and with some patience she began to give 
an account of her father’s last illness. “He had been 
so well, ’ ’ she said tearfully, 4 1 so busy with the mani- 
fold duties of his interesting appointment, and then 
came a sharp attack of fever, which caused heart 
trouble. Following that there were business worries 
and many telegrams came from England. His doc- 
tor said that they ought not to he given to him, hut 
he insisted on seeing all that arrived. The recent 
trouble in the failure of Barclay and Stevens had 
involved him,” Mrs. Irby said, “in financial bothers.” 

“Can you tell me, please, what is going to happen 
next?” asked Herky. 

“We will discuss that to-morrow,” replied Mrs. 
Irby, with her faithful habit of adhering to a pro- 
gram. “Your dear father’s last letter was written 
to you. I thought you might read it in the morning 
before you come down, and then we could meet and 
discuss things in the drawing-room.” 


162 Snow upon the Desert 

Together the sad little company dined in a vast 
dining room where formerly many happy parties had 
assembled. This was the room where polo players 
used to come to lunch ; it was the supper room to the 
ballroom also, and its white paint and polished floors 
imparted a certain air of festivity to it. Now four 
persons sat at one of the round tables, which looked 
like an island in the midst of the polished surface of 
the floor, while the servants waited solemnly, and 
nothing was spoken of hut trivial things. Mrs. Irby, 
whose conventionality had its uses, conversed 
throughout the meal from a high sense of duty. She 
had an ingenuous and childish love of sitting at the 
head of a table, and always felt that her remarks 
flowed better from there than from anywhere else. 
With her it was a matter of good breeding never to 
allow a pause in a conversation. 

“We will go to bed early, my dear,” she said to 
her niece, when the two retired to the drawing-room. 

“I think I will go now if you do not mind.” 

She said good night and sent a message to her 
father’s A.D.C. to come and speak to her. 

“I must have his letter to-night, Digby.” 

He hesitated and said, “You are too tired to- 
night.” 

“Then there is bad news?” 

“There can’t be bad news,” he said quickly. “He 
would never tell you bad news if there was any.” 


Snow upon the Desert 163 

To calm his own fear, he repeated, 4 1 There cannot 
possibly be any bad news.” 

But he had heard the gossip of the place already. 

“Digby, get it for me and let me have it.” 

She took the letter to bed and read it by the 
garish electric lamp in her room, while a big moth 
dashed itself against the globe and some mosquitoes 
hummed noisily. 

“My dear,” the letter ran, “I am putting my 
affairs in order as much as it is possible to do, and I 
am also writing to you because it is necessary to tell 
you what has happened. If my illness should take 
a turn for the better I will, of course, destroy this 
letter and come down to Bombay to meet you. 

“When you arrive in India you will probably hear 
that in the bazaars and elsewhere I am talked of as a 
swindler. In this country such a verdict is more 
odious than it can be anywhere else, because English- 
men have always tried to maintain a high standard 
of honor here. 

“When I was at home for a year’s furlough pre- 
paratory to retirement, I did not, as you know, intend 
to return to India again, and I began to busy myself 
over City matters, as retired Indian officials very 
often do, and I accepted without hesitation an invi- 
tation to join the Board of Directors of Messrs. Bar- 
clay and Stevens. Then came quite unexpectedly the 
chance of returning to India and filling a high place 
here. 


164 Snow upon the Desert 

“I want you to know that I believed Barclay and 
Stevens to be a perfectly straight concern. As a 
matter of fact, it was notoriously discreditable. I 
lent my name to one of the most gigantic swindles 
of the day. Men who knew me and trusted me put 
their money into the company because my name was 
on the prospectus. Now it has failed, and Mr. Bar- 
clay is imprisoned. If there is a trial I shall go 
home and answer to it, but my influence in India is 
over. The newspapers will tell you all the details 
of the case. All of them blame me, as they have a 
right to do. A man of over fifty years old and with 
my experience is not easily credited with being so 
foolish as to be in a firm like Barclay and Stevens, 
and not to know that its aim was to rob thousands 
of simple poor people. The firm was notorious for 
the number of small investors in it drawn from the 
lower middle classes. There is nothing to be done. 
The whole of my private means are gone, and my 
only hope is that, if I get over this illness, I may be 
able in time to discharge most of my liabilities. I 
hope I shall live to do that. I think you will help 
me, and I think you will cheerfully give up every- 
thing that possibly can be given up in order to pay 
back the gigantic debt which I owe to those who 
trusted me.” 

A woman at the best of times, and in spite of all 
that has been written about her influence and her 
powers, feels herself occasionally to be an extraor- 


165 


Snow upon the Desert 

dinarily impotent creature, primarily in the matter 
of money. There are not many women who are able 
to say, with any degree of certainty, “I shall make 
one thousand or even one hundred pounds by this 
time next year. ’ ’ Financially, except under very un- 
usual conditions, a girl of seventeen is the most 
pathetically impotent of all such creatures. Fortu- 
nately she does not realize her helplessness, as a rule. 
She believes herself to be able to overthrow moun- 
tains because she has never yet put her hand to a 
garden spade. This, no doubt, is the outcome of her 
vivid imagination. 

She uses the same power of imagination to visual- 
ize calamities in a manner that is both keen and 
ruthless. It required no effort on the part of Miss 
Lascelles to depict mentally and with horrible clear- 
ness scenes of homes given up, cottage furniture sold, 
struggling people unable to provide education for 
their sons, families with their little savings gone. 

Her father had helped to bring about this tragedy, 
his name as a director on a prospectus had been a 
valuable one, and those who had daily struggled with 
self-denial to save money had lost it through trusting 
him. 

Certainly he had set out on a difficult journey to 
restore and to refund, but death had met him on the 
way, and, not careful even of honor, had deprived 
him forever of the power of clearing his name from 
reproach. 


166 Snow upon the Desert 

She kissed the letter and said, 11 Don’t worry about 
it; I will put it all right.” 

The task of restoration was hers now. All that he 
had meant to do devolved upon her, and she was 
strong enough to do it. His name was hers, and that 
name should be held up triumphant before the world. 
If it was dishonored, not long should it remain so! 
Money must be got somehow. Nothing was impos- 
sible ! 

Thus cries heroic Youth, strung to a high pitch of 
loyalty, unfurling its banner with a shout of victory 
long before the day is won. 

“I will work,” it cries, in the naive belief that 
only to be constantly employed must bring riches. 

There was a long range of employments from which 
to choose, and it included such highly remunerated 
work as drawing maps and making pincushions, 
teaching little children, or breaking horses for ladies. 

“One must be content to begin in a small way,” 
said Miss Lascelles to herself in a very practical man- 
ner, and she decided that for the present she would 
not even tell that most useful counselor, her father’s 
A.D.C., about her plans and schemes. Digby hated 
women to work. Besides, she had nothing to tell 
him yet, and it was better to wait until her plans 
matured a little. 

Sir Hercules Lascelles ’s death had only just saved 
him from bankruptcy. His connection with the firm 
of Barclay and Stevens had produced a painful sen- 


167 


Snow upon the Desert 

sation in India. The searchlight of opinion and 
criticism was still active and turned in every direc- 
tion. A man’s purse is a sensitive part of him, and 
many of Sir Hercules’s own friends had lost money 
heavily through the failure of the well-known firm. 

Had he sent for his daughter when he found his 
health was failing? And would it not have been 
better for her to be at home in England during this 
difficult and unpleasant time? He had not said to 
anyone that she was coming, and her arrival was 
unexpected. 

“He wanted to have her with him, and she came 
out with me,” Mrs. Antrobus said, when these ques- 
tions were put to her. She seldom tampered with 
the truth and was always believed. 

Mrs. Irby, after a good deal of correspondence with 
the Lanes, in which she had once ventured to hint 
that to do up kitchen premises does cost something, 
had finally been persuaded that she would be very 
comfortable in the hotel at Lucknow. She and her 
orphan niece could establish themselves there for the 
cold weather, and though there would be no gaieties, 
of course, during the early period of deep mourning, 
the Lanes would provide friendly companionship, and 
in March the whole family party could go home to- 
gether. 

“This is absurd,” said Mrs. Antrobus, when she 
heard of the proposed plans. 

Mrs. Antrobus was in the midst of winter gaieties 


168 Snow upon the Desert 

at Lahore. Christmas was near, and she had a hun- 
dred engagements to fulfil, but on receiving a letter 
which conveyed a sketch of Miss Lascelles’s future 
plans she was heard to mutter darkly, “I may have 
to superintend the matter myself.’ ’ 

A personal interview is worth a dozen letters, and 
as Jack was tiger shooting she determined to go to 
Lucknow. 

“The Richardsons will put me up,” she said to 
herself, giving directions to her ayah about packing, 
and preparing to take leave of her friends. “I will 
telegraph to them, yes, and I will telegraph to Cap- 
tain Digby Bethel to get two or three days’ leave and 
come to Lucknow. The woman who gives her assist- 
ance unasked is accused of interfering, if the matter 
does not go well. If, on the other hand, it prospers, 
she may earn the gracious title of helpmeet. And the 
moral of that is, ‘ Never interfere.’ ” 

She packed her trunks for Lucknow. 

The Richardsons were kind-hearted people who 
lived a retired life on small means. The romance of 
Mrs. Richardson’s life was her love for Mrs. Antro- 
hus, whom she worshiped as some plain women 
sometimes worship beauty. She was good and gentle, 
and if to escape notice can ever be called conspicu- 
ous, then Mrs. Richardson was conspicuously unno- 
ticeable. Her husband was a small man who took 
photographs. They were asked to dine once a year 
at Government House, and Mrs. Richardson always 


169 


Snow upon the Desert 

got a new dress for this occasion. When they retired 
from India they would probably live at Bexhill-on- 
Sea. 

“If all the world were Richardsons, ’ ’ Mrs. An- 
trobus used to say, “it would he heaven, and most 
people would try to leave it at an early date. ’ ’ 

The Major met her at the railway station in his 
tum-tum. He was an adept at finding luggage, and 
by small attentions and a certain careful kindness he 
had made his wife perfectly happy for twenty years. 

“Minna would have met you herself/ ’ he said, 
“hut she was busy finishing some curtains/ ’ 

“Dear Minna has probably been sitting up all night 
making preparations for me,” said Mrs. Antrobus 
affectionately. 

He liked to speak about his wife’s perfections, and 
seldom chose another topic for his conversation. The 
two were lovers still, as the saying runs, and the fact 
that they were childless seemed almost as though it 
added to the success of their uneventful life of per- 
sonal devotion to each other. 

“She loves to meet her friends,” he said. 

“And they love to be met by her,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus cordially. “It is good to lean one’s head out 
of the window as a train slows down in a station and 
see her standing on the platform.” 

“After all these years we have been together,” he 
said, “I have never known her meet me without a 
smile.” 


170 Snow upon the Desert 

1 ‘The economic waste of the thing !” cried Mrs. 
Antrobus. “Don’t you know you are thrown away 
on anything but a shrew ? ’ ’ 

Major Eichardson dimly understood that the allu- 
sion to himself and his wife was a kindly one, and he 
remarked oracularly that he pitied any man who 
had a shrew for his wife. 

“Have you ever noticed that we always assume 
that the feminine of dog is cat?” 

Under her big red parasol her face had its old 
brilliant look. An artist might have painted her in a 
study of three colors — big red parasol, gray travel- 
ing dress, the color in her cheeks to match the sun- 
shade, and the lock of white hair under her broad 
hat. 

“The feminine of dog is cat!” repeated Major 
Eichardson. He was always a little bewildered by 
her. 

“When we talk of a good, kind doggie, metaphori- 
cally, we always mean a man, and a cat, of course, 
means a woman.” 

“I am sure Minna is not a cat!” he said, flicking 
the pony with his whip. 

“No, and if she were you would never know it!” 

“But, do you know, I like cats,” he said literally. 

“All men do!” 

He remarked, as though contributing something 
original to the conversation, that perhaps what he 
meant was that he liked stay-at-home women. 


Snow upon the Desert 171 

“You can’t sit on the hearth all day and not be- 
come a cat!” she retorted. 

There seemed nothing for it on the Major’s part 
since he had lost the thread of the conversation but 
to say politely, “You are not a cat!” 

“No, but then no one can say that I sit on a 
hearth.” 

He always accepted Minna’s friends, and faithfully 
and loyally approved of all whom she approved; 
otherwise he might have admitted that he found Mrs. 
Antrobus a little enigmatical. 

“Women have much wider interests nowadays than 
they used to have,” he admitted in a broad-minded 
way, intended to excuse her. He was thinking of 
Minna with her welcoming smile at the door of the 
bungalow, and thanking God that she so seldom 
wished to go beyond it. He pointed out some build- 
ings with his whip and mentioned one or two mat- 
ters of local interest to his companion, which she 
already knew ; then fearing that by making a sudden 
break in the conversation he might have appeared 
discourteous, he endeavored to fit his mind to hers, 
and said, “And certainly these wider interests have 
developed a well-balanced judgment and restraint in 
women. ’ ’ 

“We used to faint and go into hysterics,” she an- 
swered, “now we have rest cures which are much 
more expensive.” 

“I should feel it very deeply if Minna did not 


172 


Snow upon the Desert 

come to me with her tears,” he said. ‘‘A woman that 
cannot weep ” 

‘ ‘ Self-restraint is the final goal of civilization, ’ ’ she 
responded quickly. “What expression will over- 
civilization have?” 

This was evidently the moment to talk about the 
later days of Rome. From such an analogy men of 
the type of Major Richardson find escape impossible. 
He faithfully repeated what he had read in many 
newspapers about decadence, and “only hoped we 
should not get a sharp lesson some day.” 

“But it is inevitable!” she cried. “Civilization is 
necessarily effete, and as soon as we are unable to 
fight the barbarians will break us, as they have broken 
all other over-civilized nations.” 

He was half- vexed that after a long journey a 
woman should feel up for a discussion, and not silent 
and anxious to lie down. Still, it seemed his oppor- 
tunity to allude to a possible German invasion ; then, 
deciding that perhaps Germans were not barbarians, 
he remained silent. Finally he said, “We are almost 
there,” and his amiable face lighted up with pleas- 
ure as it always did when he returned home. 

He went to a race meeting as he went to church, 
with the same expression of mild seriousness in his 
face; only his return to the small bungalow ever 
brought a vivid sense of pleasure with it. 

Minna was at the door with her smile and, as the 
tum-tum drew up before the porch and the lazy pony 


Snow upon the Desert 173 

slowed down into a walk, he said he knew she would 
come out to meet them. 

A peculiar sense of peace surrounded the Richard- 
sons, and Mrs. Antrobus found herself wishing that 
she had nothing to do for the next few days hut to 
enjoy the restfulness of the modest, badly furnished 
little house and these good, kind people with their 
limited intelligence and their reposeful habit of ask- 
ing nothing in the way of amusement or entertain- 
ment from the companionship of their friends. 

Mrs. Richardson was quite sure her guest would 
like to go to her room, although she would not for 
worlds hurry her over her tea, but the new chintz 
curtains had, as a matter of fact, been finished just 
in time. They had now been put up and really did 
look nice. 

‘ ‘ Oh, they are lovely, my dear ! Minna, you would 
make a home of a cave ! ’ ’ 

Mrs. Richardson was one of the women who enjoy 
India in a quiet way. She even sewed a white seam 
sometimes. 

“We thought we would not go out anywhere to- 
night, but just have you and enjoy you all to our- 
selves. Only the chaplain is coming to dine.” (They 
generally had a chaplain to dine.) 

“May I ride to-morrow morning?” said Mrs. An- 
trobus. “I want to see a very stupid young man in 
Lucknow whose business I have made mine, and in 


174 Snow upon the Desert 

whose affairs I am interfering quite dangerously. I 
told him to bring the ponies early. ” 

Mrs. Antrobus went to bed betimes, and enjoyed 
the sensation of rest after a week of late hours at 
Lahore. Early hours and the Richardsons, she 
thought, were pleasantly in accord with each other. 
The homely, prim little room with its chintz curtains 
had a sense of soothing about it ; the Bible on a little 
table by the bed was like lavender among fair linen, 
homely and sweet, the special property of good folk 
like them. 

In the morning she got up early, when it was still 
cold, and told herself when dressing that young men 
who cannot manage their own affairs are a very 
serious trouble to their friends. Then she drank her 
tea and went out and found Digby waiting for her in 
the road where the dust was laid with heavy dew, 
and holding her pony for her. As she came down 
the path from the creeper-hung doorway he thought 
that in a habit she looked handsomer than he had 
ever seen her. Its masculinity seemed to suit her, * 
and threw into contrast the very feminine lines of her 
face. The rakishness of top boots had a cavalier 
touch about it which emphasized womanhood and 
made it dear. 

She asked after his doings as they walked their 
horses down the Mall, remembered his ponies by 
name, and then said suddenly, 4 * What are you ar- 
ranging for Herky?” 


Snow upon the Desert 175 

“There is very little one can do,” he said miser- 
ably; “I think she bears up too well.” 

“She has probably heard all that has been said 
about him.” 

“I can’t make it out,” he said. “She generally 
tells me everything, but she says nothing about this, 
and I do not know what she knows. ’ ’ 

“That is bad,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“You see, I can’t bother her now,” he exclaimed, 
“or ask her questions.” 

“M’m,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“You don’t quite understand,” he said. “She is 
not only in sorrow, but I think she’s got something 
on her mind.” 

“You ought to know what it is,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus sharply. 

1 ‘ I thought I ’d leave her quite alone for a little bit 
and not worry her,” he explained. “Later I could 
write.” 

“The limited intelligence of men ” began Mrs. 

Antrobus. 

“ I ’d like to speak plainly if you don ’t mind, ’ ’ the 
young man said steadily. “You know I love her. It 
would be absurd to pretend that I don’t. I have 
loved her ever since she was a little girl in short 
frocks. ’ ’ 

“Yes.” 

“She is quite unlike other girls.” 

Mrs. Antrobus may have heard this story before, 


176 Snow upon the Desert 

for she gave her pony a sudden flick with her whip. 

“Oh, I’m not going to bore you with gush,” he 
said, smiling at her little unconscious impatience. 
“I only meant for the sake of argument that her 
whole upbringing has been different from that of 
other girls. You don’t learn all about convention- 
alities in Nepal, nor do you hear much about what is 
considered proper in Tibet.” 

“So she ran away from school and joined you in 
Paris?” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“Yes, and then you rescued us,” he answered, 
smiling. 

“You felt you ought not to propose to her until 
you had put her under her father’s care.” 

“Yes, and now all this has happened, and she 
is thinking about things which she never tells me, 
and upon my word I don’t know whether I’ve a 
chance or not.” 

They rode on side by side at a foot’s pace, and their 
ponies disturbed the surface of the dew-spread road 
with their hoofs and found the dust underneath it. 
As they walked they flung up puffs of powdery gray 
mud about their hocks. 

“I think she wants you even if she does not know 
it,” Mrs. Antrobus said. 

Captain Bethel restrained a desire to bless Mrs. 
Antrobus aloud. 

“How soon will you speak?” she said. 

“To-day!” he answered with a shout. 


177 


Snow upon the Desert 

Mrs. Antrobus gave a sigh of relief. ‘ ‘ There could 
be a quiet wedding very soon,” she said. “Go home 
for your honeymoon, and then come back to India as 
a married couple with everything settled between 
you.” 

He quickened the pace of his horse, as though 
starting that moment to go to her. 

“Peace!” said Mrs. Antrobus, laying a restrain- 
ing riding whip upon his arm. “I am going to have 
breakfast with her, and she will have a thousand 
things to say to me. Come in the afternoon.” 

“I shan’t ask you even to say a good word for 
me, 9 ’ he said ; and added in a thankful way, “I be- 
lieve it’ll be all right.” 

“You will ask me to the wedding?” she cried. 
“You know, my dear, I have traveled many miles to 
tell you what a fool you are!” 

“That is so like you!” he responded eagerly. 
“And you are so much afraid I shall thank you for 
having taken all this trouble for me that you begin 
to call me bad names.” 

They set their horses into a gallop and raced over 
some dry yellow grass down to the racecourse, where 
men in brown boots and tweed jackets were taking 
their morning exercise. 

“Does she not even ride now?” 

“No,” responded the young man. “You will find 
her changed.” 


178 


Snow upon the Desert 

‘ 1 But life comes back when one is seventeen, ’ ’ Mrs. 
Antrobus said. 

“Will you say to her that I will come in at five 
o ’clock ? ’ ’ 

He rode away from the door of the hotel, and 
looking back for a moment he could see a small figure 
in black appear in the veranda and draw her friend 
into the house. 

“We are going to have breakfast together, you and 
I,” the girl said. “My aunt knew we should like to 
see each other alone, and I have had it put on a 
table in my balcony.” 

“Herky dear,” said Mrs. Antrobus, “I am behav- 
ing very idiotically, but I have not seen you in black 
before. Do you know that I am crying and cannot 
get on with my breakfast?” 

Their tears flowed together for a time. 

“But you have cried too much,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus at last, drying her eyes, “and you must not 
cry any more. You have probably cried in the night 
when you thought no one was listening, and there 
was no one to tell you to dry your eyes, which is 
bad. And you are thinner, Herky. There will be 
nothing of you left soon but a little black frock and 
some yellow hair.” 

“Does the very worst thing always happen to 
one?” Herky said with all youth’s tragedy of belief 
in its own unique suffering, “or is it only that one’s 


Snow upon the Desert 179 

own grief always seems to be the hardest and the 
most impossible to bear?” 

“The worst generally happens,” said Mrs. Antro- 
bus lightly, “but as a rule it doesn’t much matter.” 

“I did not even see him,” Hercules said. “If I 
could even have seen him after he was dead to say 
good-bye to him, I think I could have borne it. We 
had so much to say to each other.” 

“It is more merciful that we should part with our 
dearest as if we were going to see them to-morrow,” 
Mrs. Antrobus said. “We say good-bye at Padding- 
ton station, perhaps, and then they tell us we shall 
meet in heaven. It is a big jump.” 

“Why do we love people so much?” 

“I do not know.” 

When grief had had its turn the older woman 
preached consolation, turning the girl’s thoughts to 
other channels and speaking to her of the years that 
might still bring happiness with them. 

“We are going home to England in March,” said 
Herky, “and I am not fond of England. I am going 
to make my home with my aunt, you know, until I 
can do something for myself.” 

“You are a strong and able-bodied person, Herky. 
Shall you carve out a career for yourself as women 
in England are doing now ? ’ ’ 

“I wish I could,” Herky said, “but I do not know 
how it is done. When one is in grief one does not 
sleep very much at night, and that gives one much 


180 Snow upon the Desert 

time to think, I have been thinking a great deal 
lately, ’ ’ 

“You will never have to work for your living,’ ’ 
said Mrs. Antrobus quickly, recalling all she had 
heard about her father’s loss of fortune. “Something 
must remain to you, and even in your aunt’s house, 
Herky, I should like you to have an income of your 
own.” 

“I want to be very rich,” said the girl. 

Mrs. Antrobus ’s mouth puckered a little at the 
corners. “How do you propose to set about it?” 
she said. 

“I hope I shall marry someone of great wealth.” 

“That’s a very old way of doing it,” said Mrs. 
Antrobus. 

“I believe it is the only one.” 

‘ ‘ Herky, you are shocking me!” 

“I believe I have a very Oriental habit of mind.” 

“Personally,” said Mrs. Antrobus dryly, “I would 
almost rather ‘carve out a career,’ although I know 
it takes a bit of doing. ’ ’ 

“And it is not well paid,” said Hercules sagely. 
“I had a governess at school. She had been to Gir- 
ton, which cost money, and had passed many exami- 
nations. Her salary at school was a hundred pounds 
a year, and she was getting a little bit old ; also her 
nose was red, poor Miss Grove! I do not think she 
will ever marry now.” 

“Herky, money is not all-important.” 


181 


Snow upon the Desert 

“It is very important.” 

‘ ‘ I did not know that yon were worldly , 9 ’ said Mrs. 
Antrobus. 

No one could call Digby Bethel a rich man, but 
surely he was worth having. 

“The average woman is incapable of making a 
great deal of money,” responded the young girl, “I 
think I am below the average. But I believe the 
average woman may marry. She often does.” 

“My dear, I’m not being a bit improved by this 
conversation.” 

“But if it is the only way to be rich?” 

“What is the use of money!” exclaimed Mrs. An- 
trobus. “Oh, I know everyone will say that one 
cannot get on without it, and it is a platitude to 
observe that it does not bring happiness, but if India 
does nothing else it teaches us that no one is liked 
better for their money here. We may make a fetish 
of position, but indeed we never glorify a purse.” 

“It seems to me that only with money can one do 
good!” 

“But that is sophistry!” exclaimed her friend. 
“The woman who says ‘I want money in order that 
I may do good’ is only really finding an excuse for 
herself. Perhaps it is not to be our privilege even 
to be generous!” 

“But perhaps one may be allowed to be just.” 

“Do not let us speak about disagreeables,” said 
Mrs. Antrobus. “Tell me about Digby. Have you 


182 


Snow upon the Desert 

seen him lately? You know he and I rode together 
this morning ?” 

‘ * Sometimes when I think that in future I may not 
see much of him,” said Miss Lascelles, “I am in 
despair/ ’ 

Mrs. Antrobus, meeting the young man as she rode 
home later, leaned from her saddle and said to him 
with a smile, “It’s all right !” 


Chapter X 


S TILL, you know/’ said Captain Digby Bethel 
to himself, “it’s much more difficult to pro- 
pose to a girl than most people imagine.” 

Herky seemed to him a rather unapproachable 
person, because he had made up his mind to say to 
her words which meant very much to him. Perhaps 
her black dress and some unconfessed trouble of hers 
set her farther than he was aware from the girl he 
knew and remembered. 

To-day he thought she looked ill and delicate, and 
the small blue-veined hands folded on the crape of 
her dress touched him in a way that he was unable 
to express. 

“You’re not looking very well!” he said severely. 
“I don’t think I am very well, thank you, Digs.” 
“Does your aunt know? Is she looking after you 
properly?” 

“She is very kind.” 

“Herky, you would tell me if you were really ill, 
wouldn’t you?” 

The room where they sat was not without comfort. 
There were flowers in it and books, and the windows 
183 


184 Snow upon the Desert 

looked on to the garden of the hotel, watered all day 
long by bheestes who swung themselves from side to 
side as they scattered water from their goatskins. 
Big scavenger crows, gray and black and absurdly 
solemn-looking, showed a familiarity with human 
beings bordering on contempt as they flopped heavily 
about the grass. The air was sharp and fresh, rising 
to heat at midday, and the sky was blue and infinitely 
far away. Outside on the now dry and dusty road a 
constant stream of people passed, coming apparently 
from nowhere and going nowhere; their restlessness 
seemed to accentuate the quietness of the small hotel 
sitting room. 

“I seem to have had a good deal of trouble/ ’ she 
said, her eyes filling. 

“No one knows that better than I.” 

“I do not think even you know it all.” 

“Tell me about it, Herky. You don’t know how 
I want to comfort you.” 

“To-day,” she said in her sober way, “I have quite 
a new trouble. I am engaged to be married.” 

“What simple rot!” he roared. 

“Digby, Digby! You make me jump.” 

“I am sorry, but don ’t let ’s talk nonsense. Let us 
talk plain sense. You are not engaged to be mar- 
ried. I will not believe it.” 

He pulled himself together, but his voice was thick 
and unlike his own, and he rose from his seat and 
came and sat beside her, while the words that he 


185 


Snow upon the Desert 

wanted to say stumbled over each other and were 
hardly intelligible. 

“I’ve loved you all my life,” he said. “Why do 
you tell me this amazing story? We love each other.” 

“Digby,” she said, “is this true?” 

“Is what true?” he asked miserably. 

“That you and I love each other?” 

“It’s truer than anything in heaven or earth,” he 
answered. “You can’t get away from it. I love you 
and you love me.” 

“Are you quite sure?” she asked. 

“Absolutely!” he shouted. “Herky, what have 
you been doing? Why have you been playing this 
absurd game of pretending to be engaged to some- 
body else? It is only some stupid mistake you have 
made. You were unhappy and I was an idiot, and 
thought you would like to be left alone and not 
bothered, so someone else has stepped in. Who, in 
the name of Heaven, has the right to take you from 
me or to pretend that he loves you ? ’ ’ 

“I do not know if he loves me or not,” she an- 
swered simply. 

“That is a nice sort of man to get engaged to,” 
he replied, laughing. He took both her hands be- 
tween his and kissed them and said, “He shan’t rob 
me of my love, whoever he is! Tell me his name, 
Herky, and I will get you out of this stupid muddle 
in less time than it takes to tell. ’ ’ 

“He proposed to me to-day,” she faltered. “I 


186 


Snow upon the Desert 

want to be rich, and I know no way of making money, 
and Mr. Belt, the man whom we knew on board ship, 
asked me to marry him, and I said yes. * ’ 

He stood before her with his shoulders thrown 
back, a good type of a young man in a vile temper — 
one who is not going to accept the ill things of life 
without fighting. “I am not going to take this lying 
down,” he said. “Mr. Belt has got to reckon with 
me before he marries you. Where did the man spring 
from? What business has he in Lucknow at all? 
Has he come to buy the Residency and set it up be- 
side the Crystal Palace at Sydenham?” 

“He had business with a Parsee gentleman,” she 
said. 

“And included a proposal of marriage in his busi- 
ness trip?” 

“He was very kind.” 

“Oh, he was kind, was he?” 

The words, which are not of much significance 
when written, were made to express sarcasm and 
other terrible things. 

“I do not know what to do, Digby! I do not 
know what to do!” 

He paused abruptly and saw that her face had 
grown white. She loosened at her throat a little 
muslin collar that would not have incommoded a 
canary, and he noticed that the blood had left her 
hands. He took them again within his own and 


Snow upon the Desert 187 

chafed them, calling her every tender name that he 
could think of. 

“You are ill, and I have been a brute to you.” 
He smoothed her hair and made her sit quietly by 
the open window, and they sat hand in hand for a 
time until she rose and said with difficulty, “I think 
you had better go, Digs, I think you had better go ! ’ ’ 

“Why?” he protested. 

“This is the longest day I have ever spent. I 
think now I am tired.” 

“You’ve always liked to have me with you when 
you were tired before,” he said miserably. 

“I suppose,” she answered slowly, “that must have 
been because I loved you.” 

He smiled. “That seems to me the very best rea- 
son in the world!” 

“But now that I know that I love you, you must 
leave me, please.” 

“Why?” 

“Oh, I don’t know — I really don’t know!” 

“If you want me I am going to stay with you. I 
don’t care if all the Belts in the world try to keep 
us from each other.” 

“I’m afraid he will be disappointed. ’ ’ 

“Not he!” said Captain Bethel comfortably. 

“Besides, besides — oh, it’s all a dreadful muddle, 
Digby. You see, I didn’t know that I loved you. 
It’s very silly of me to feel shaky just because every- 
thing is in a muddle but I — I think I must go and 


188 Snow upon the Desert 

lie down for a little.’ ’ She rose from her seat and 
swayed as she walked. Then Mrs. Irby came in with 
remedies and advice, an ayah with tears and many 
words of consolation, and Digby, murmuring some- 
thing about going for Dr. Munro, rode off on his pony 
down the Mall. 

In the evening when he went to inquire for Miss 
Lascelles’s health he heard she was better, and there 
was a little note waiting for him, which he read as 
he stood by the hotel steps with the reins of his pony 
on his arm. 

“My dearest Digby,” the note said (it was in 
pencil, and he guessed from its crushed appearance 
that it must have been written while she lay upon the 
sofa or in bed), “I’ve been thinking things over a 
great deal. I thought at first that I could marry 
Mr. Belt, which would suit me in a great many ways, 
and yet see a great deal of you, and that then I 
could be quite happy. But somehow I don’t think I 
can do this now, because of course I should love you 
much better than I love him. So will you please go 
away without even seeing me again? I shall never 
forget it and I shall always love you. 

‘ ‘ Herky. ’ ’ 

Captain Bethel mounted his pony and rode off 
through the moonlight and the dust to the Richard- 
sons’ bungalow, where he found Mrs. Antrobus alone, 
smoking cigarettes on the veranda. 


189 


Snow upon the Desert 

“You are always at hand when one wants you,” 
he said, and he noted with gratitude the quick atten- 
tion she gave him, throwing away her cigarette and 
sitting up in her chair with an alert movement. He 
did not know that his face, from which the color had 
all gone, spoke more urgently for him than his words, 
or that Mrs. Antrobus could have guessed from his 
voice that things were not well with him. 

“I want to speak to you about something/ ’ he 
said, and then, because he found speech difficult, he 
took a little crumpled note out of his pocket and 
gave it to her. 

There were electric lights slung in the veranda 
among the palms and trailing creepers. Mrs. An- 
trobus spread the page out and held it to the light. 

“Whom is she going to marry?” she said shortly, 
when she had finished. 

“Belt, the man on hoard the 1 Bolivia. * ” 

“That is grotesque,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“It is hideous!” he said. 

“It must be stopped,” said she. 

They sat together talking, arranging, planning and 
contriving, wondering and speculating till carriage 
wheels could be heard in the road outside, bringing 
the Richardsons from one of their rare parties, and 
Major Richardson’s voice calling “Syce!” as his 
tum-tum stopped at the gate. 

“Can I escape?” said Digby. “I don’t want to 
meet the Richardsons and have to talk,” and he 


190 Snow upon the Desert 

stepped off the veranda, and crossed the dusty com- 
pound to where his pony was hitched to a post. 

“I have preached hope to him,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus, “but I am not quite sure that the situation is 
hopeful. A man is always easily managed, and a 
woman generally has some vulnerable point, but a 
gentle, good girl is the most intractable creature on 
God’s earth. Now I suppose I shall have to go and 
greet the Richardsons. And to-morrow I must cer- 
tainly go and see Herky before she gets up in the 
morning. The woman who is up and dressed, and 
who sits on the edge of the bed and lectures, always 
has an advantage over the one who has not yet done 
her hair, and whose attire prevents her marching out 
of the room. Dear me! Life is a little fatiguing 
sometimes ! ’ ’ 

Mr. Belt had loved the handsome Lancashire 
woman who was the mother of his children, and since 
her death he had not cared to marry again. But his 
dangerous kindliness, his reckless belief in human 
nature, and his large fortune, which made the relief 
of suffering easy, had been a menace more than once 
to his widowerhood. He was called “uncle” by 
many ladies, who often reminded him of promises — 
of which he himself had no recollection — to send them 
useful gifts. To prevent himself from getting en- 
gaged to be married again had been almost exclu- 
sively his social lifework, and now, like a prisoner to 
whom the simplicity of opening a door and walking 


191 


Snow upon the Desert 

out suddenly suggests itself, Mr. Belt was going to 
safeguard himself forever by matrimony. Naturally 
he chose a maiden in distress. No one else could more 
completely appeal to Mr. Belt’s chivalry than the 
young girl left alone in the world with no one to care 
for her, and, so far as he knew, with every penny of 
her fortune gone in that rotten concern of Barclay 
and Stevens, which no man short of a lunatic would 
have had anything to do with. It pleased him enor- 
mously to help this lovely young creature out of a 
difficulty, and mingled with a very real affection for 
her was a pleasant sense of repose that no one would 
now try to marry him. In the intervals of making 
money, honestly and successfully, he looked forward 
to making her perfectly happy, and her happiness 
was connected in his mind with wearing very long 
and valuable strings of pearls. She was poor and 
alone, and his protective instinct made him wish to 
take care of her and give her things. Her room be- 
came crowded with treasures of spurious Oriental 
art, and he bought a victoria and an expensive pair 
of ponies to take her for drives in the afternoon. His 
deafness was more apparent when he drove than at 
any other time, but, as he pointed out to his fiancee, 
this was a very good sign — it was only hopelessly deaf 
people who heard best when a noise was going on, 
and he always remembered to make her sit on that 
side of the carriage which controlled his best ear. 

Mrs. Irby was a well-born woman, one who stood 


192 Snow upon the Desert 

up for her own order with something of the zeal and 
in the same resolute and unattractive fashion in 
which some people stand up for their opinions. She 
was loved by her villagers at home, who respected her 
high nose and her velvet mantle, and she was feared 
by all new people who had the temerity to come and 
settle in her neighborhood. She based her liking 
strictly on genealogy, and kept her larger affections 
for her own family. In her own mind she placed 
Mr. Belt on a level with her stout butler at home, 
and would not have been surprised if he had ad- 
dressed her as “Ma’am.” In his company her good 
breeding was almost more than defensive, it became 
an intruding, almost offensive thing. 

Yet a more sober judgment could not but allow 
that Mr. Belt’s age and appearance were the most 
blameworthy things about him, and these, she ad- 
mitted to herself, were not within his control. 

A man may be good, although his face is round and 
shining; and this north-country merchant, with his 
kindly, paternal manner, owned a genius that many 
of those who despised him might have been glad to 
possess. He saw resources in the wealth of India 
which he could have turned to account in a few 
months’ time, and he had schemes for building fac- 
tories which might revolutionize trade in the East 
before long. He hardly cared to put out his hand 
now to seize a fortune ; the wonder seemed to be that 
other men were so blind as not to see the gold which 


193 


Snow upon the Desert 

literally strewed India. Why had they to be told 
where to pick it up ? It was a simple business 
enough. He himself had grown almost tired of mak- 
ing money, and now he was pleased to have someone 
to spend it on. 

Mrs. Irby sometimes wondered shrewdly what par- 
ticular charm he had found in the little orphan with 
her black frock and gray eyes. Surely he might have 
been more attracted by what he himself would have 
called a fine woman. Miss Lascelles’ beauty was of 
too delicate a sort to attract the man who obviously 
might be expected to choose for a wife a woman who 
would present a fine appearance as she stood at the 
head of his staircase in Park Lane at a ball or a 
crush, or who would gracefully receive his friends at 
some of his heavily gastronomic parties. 

There were others who thought it might have been 
better had Mr. Belt adopted the penniless girl and 
brought her up with his own daughters, two stout- 
legged, fresh-complexioned girls, now being educated 
at an expensive school in Paris. Mr. Belt was a good 
old boy, but the engagement was a preposterous one ! 

Finally Mrs. Irby put the right touch upon the 
affair by calling him an excellent person. Thus was 
her mental attitude defined and her social creed held 
inviolate. Everyone who was able to do so married 
money nowadays, and as a basis for matrimony money 
was not to be despised. A young girl, not very 


194 


Snow upon the Desert 

strong, and without many friends, would be much 
happier with a good man to look after her. 

Mrs. Irby was cordial to Mr. Belt as a man, but 
she resented it when anyone alluded to him as her 
future nephew, and she never got accustomed to hear- 
ing him address her niece by her Christian name. 

Money, Mrs. Antrobus had often said, does not 
count for much in India. Mr. Belt was relieved to 
find that the lady of his choice had very sensible 
notions about it. 

“I want a great deal of money,” she said to him 
one day. 

“I believe one can hardly have too much of it,” 
he replied. ‘ ‘How much do you want?” 

“Settlements,” she replied. 

“Oh, you’ll have settlements right enough, my 
little lass, ’ ’ he answered, laughing, ‘ ‘ and a good lump 
to spend when the old man’s gone!” ■ 

“I want it quite soon, please,” she said. 

“We must set a lawyer chap to do some quill- 
driving,” he said, “and I don’t think you’ll have 
any complaint to make. No, nor that old aunt of 
yours, either.” 

He loved to go shopping in the bazaars, the young 
girl by his side, and to hand out to her a great fistful 
of gold when the business of paying came, and he 
was beloved by bazaar men because of a belief he 
held that it was ungentlemanly to barter with a 
tradesman. 


195 


Snow upon the Desert 

“Do you think,” she said, “that you would mind 
giving me a blank checkbook?” 

He laughed delightedly, and said that was a tall 
order for a little lass. 

“I have some debts which I wish to pay.” 

“Well, now,” he said, “you just send them along 
to me and, whether it’s for fripperies or lollipops, I’ll 
pay them with my eyes shut and never ask a ques- 
tion.” 

1 ‘ 1 believe they are very large debts. ’ ’ 

“You can’t frighten me,” he answered, smiling. 

“I’m very glad I ’m going to have so much money, ’ ’ 
she said. 

“Why, that’s right,” he said, “and I don’t believe 
you ’ll ever regret marrying me ! The girls will keep 
you young, although I am a bit on in years. They 
are both good girls. Nellie is as tall as I am.” 

“I am in grave difficulties,” she went on. “You 
see, my father died leaving no money at all.” 

“It always beats me,” he said, “how clever men 
can have so little head for figures. Well, my dear, 
I don’t believe any woman ever appealed to me in 
vain to help her, and I’m not going to refuse my 
wife anything she wants.” 

“I suppose I couldn’t ask him to give me the 
money without marrying me,” said Herky to herself. 

She had heard that morning from Digby. He was 
going on an expedition which would take him away 
for six months, and he hoped and said that he would 


196 Snow upon the Desert 

be very grateful to anybody who would take the 
trouble to put a bullet into him, so this was good-bye, 
and he remained forever her loving Digby. 

“It can’t be wrong to kiss a bit of paper,” said 
Herky. This was after she had sat for a long time 
in the hotel sitting room with Digby ’s letter in her 
hand. 

She went up to the Residency, whither her steps 
took her on many days of the week. In the Resi- 
dency everyone seemed to know what it meant to 
fight against odds. Once she met a very old man 
there and made friends with him. He had been in 
Lucknow throughout the siege, and he told her brave 
deeds of heroes, and of how the Highlanders had set 
their pipes skirling and danced reels as soon as they 
got within the bullet-riddled walls. “It was the only 
thing to do,” the old man said, “it was the only 
thing to do. We must have cried or laughed, so we 
laughed. Only we liked best to play with the chil- 
dren, because they never saw whether we were crying 
or not.” 

‘ ‘ I suppose it is always better not to give in, ’ ’ she 
said with a sigh. 

A slight attack of illness caused a welcome break 
in Miss Lascelles’s life at this somewhat difficult 
time. Her indisposition merged itself into an attack 
of fever, and Mrs. Irby, not more prone to platitudes 
than are most women of her age, could only exclaim 
in a manner not very original, “Troubles never come 


197 


Snow upon the Desert 

singly,” when following on this her son-in-law was 
ordered to Rangoon. His wife could accompany him 
thither, but the charming babies would have to go 
home. Mrs. Irby, convinced now that the Fates were 
against her enjoying India in the way she had in- 
tended, offered to be the children’s guardian on their 
voyage to England. Plans were once more difficult 
to make, owing to Herky’s illness, but the doctor 
hoped confidently that she might be able to travel by 
the twenty-third, and, with the evidence of a clinical 
thermometer to support him, he advised that passages 
might now be booked. Homeward-bound ships were 
full at this time of year, but thanks to Mr. Belt’s per- 
sonal acquaintance with one of the directors of the 
P. & 0. line, suitable accommodation was provided, 
and he himself saw to his fiancee’s comfort, although 
business in Madras prevented his accompanying her 
himself. Mrs. Irby decided to take the babies to 
Eastbourne, where a little house might be found for 
herself and them and her niece, and there her unmar- 
ried daughter might join them until the house in 
Gloucestershire was once more empty of tenants and 
at her disposal. Everything had to be arranged in 
a hurry, but the course of Miss Lascelles’s fever re- 
fused to run at any accelerated speed. 

“I really can’t upset all my plans again,” said 
poor Mrs. Irby, and she began to feel not at all satis- 
fied with the accounts she got of the health of her 
unmarried daughter, who was working far too hard 


198 Snow upon the Desert 

in Paris. Mrs. Irby began to worry and to send long 
expensive cables to the French capital, and, having 
made up her mind that the news of dear Maud would 
be bad, every reply she received she interpreted in 
the most desponding light. Finally, when the omi- 
nous message, ‘ ‘ Getting on fairly well, ’ ’ was received, 
she decided that nothing in the world should prevent 
her sailing on the twenty -third. In the overwhelm- 
ing anxiety of the moment her niece’s affairs, which, 
like everything else in Mrs. Irby’s world, were sec- 
ondary in interest to those of her own family, could 
only be considered in snatches. In the bustle of 
preparation attendant upon her uncomfortable and 
hurried start she could only shelter herself in the 
ever-present fortress of maternal duty. 

“My first duty is to my children,” she repeated 
more than once in those days, when the doctor, in 
spite of the former evidence of the clinical ther- 
mometer, pronounced that her niece was unfit for 
the journey home. 

“You must not think about me,” pleaded Herky, 
being hardly aware how unnecessary her warning 
was. “My ayah will look after me, and I can go to 
Mrs. Antrobus when I am better.” 

“No, no,” said Mrs. Irby sharply. She had ac- 
cepted Mrs. Antrobus ’s cordial and kindly untruths 
on the subject of her niece’s journey in much the 
same way as she would have accepted the loan of an 
umbrella in a downpour of rain from a chorus girl, 


199 


Snow upon the Desert 

perhaps. She would thank her and take the um- 
brella, but there the civility must end. At present 
she was wondering rather painfully if there was any- 
one else in India whom she could ask to befriend her 
niece save the woman she did not want to know. 

The Richardsons stepped into the breach, not for 
the first time in their kindly, unobtrusive lives, and 
invited Miss Lascelles to stay with them, to be nursed 
hack to health. Not only so, but they also suggested 
that as Mr. Belt was staying on in India it might 
be a good thing for the marriage to take place from 
Lucknow. Everyone knew that it would necessarily 
be a quiet affair, involving no reception or entertain- 
ment, and gentle Mrs. Richardson was prepared to 
act the part of mother in the matter. She and her 
husband had met Mr. Belt and liked him; their un- 
critical minds discounted his obvious defects, and 
their friendship was as disinterested as it was sincere. 

The Richardsons were quiet enough to suit even 
Mrs. Irby’s notions of respectability. She called in 
person to give her thanks at the bungalow, and was 
only reminded when she saw how shabby it was that, 
after all, it was some sort of social distinction for 
people so humble to have a Lieutenant-Governor’s 
daughter to stay with them. 

“I have every confidence in giving her into your 
care, ’ ’ she said to Mrs. Richardson, who felt flattered 
by her approval. 

“Good-bye, my dear, dear child,” she said to her 


200 


Snow upon the Desert 

niece when the moment of departure came. “Before 
I see you again you will be married and will have 
tasted all its cares and responsibilities, and I hope 
and pray that you will be happy. A good wife may 
find in her husband much that is not apparent to the 
outside world.” After some reflection it was the 
most generous thing she could find to say about the 
man whom she refused to think of as her future 
nephew. 

“Write often,” she said, as though desirous of 
establishing a cord of communication between herself 
and unknown ills. ‘ ‘ Keep me informed of everything 
that goes on. 7> 

She was one of those people with whom moral re- 
sponsibility takes the form of a fervent and anxious 
desire to be the first to hear bad news. 

Aunt and niece kissed each other, feeling perhaps 
a deeper sense of affection in that moment of farewell 
than they had ever felt before. Herky, in her weak- 
ness, cried her eyes red when she found herself left 
alone, and was comforted by Mrs. Richardson, who 
came to call and sat with her all the morning, while 
her husband, with his passion for speeding the part- 
ing guest, went to the station with Mrs. Irby and took 
an excellent snapshot of the moving train. 

“Good-bye, good-bye — take care of her!” cried 
Mrs. Irby, waving her hand in a general sort of way 
to everyone on the platform and launching her mes- 


Snow upon the Desert 201 

sage like a bottle sent floating on the waves to be 
picked up by someone. 

‘ ‘ It would have been better if there had been more 
of a curve,” said the Major as he tenderly replaced 
his camera in its case. 

The best curtains, which Mrs. Richardson had 
folded with care when Mrs. Antrobus left, were put 
up again, and a small bed with a mosquito net round 
it was made ready for the invalid, and Miss Lascelles 
began to believe that illness was a pleasant interlude 
in the midst of frequent happenings. She received 
letters from Mr. Belt, but was not permitted to an- 
swer them, and as she grew better a little youthful 
companionship was provided by Miss Ellie Grainger, 
who came to tea. 

Ellie was a short girl, very pink, very definite, and 
with perfectly formed views on all subjects. She had 
a refined voice, and hoped that England understood 
its responsibilities in India. 

“We ought to remember,” she said, as she sat 
composedly in the Richardsons’ drawing-room, quite 
satisfied with her position as visitor of the sick, “that 
English people should be looked up to by the natives. 
I want to tell them that it is more by example than 
by anything else that this can be done. I know I am 
very young to discuss such matters, but I do see them 
all most clearly.” 

“Now, would you ever guess,” said Colonel 
Grainger, “that that was a child of mine?” 


202 Snow upon the Desert 

Colonel Grainger had called to take his daughter 
home and to offer her the choice of driving with her 
mother or walking with him. 

“Oh, I’d much rather drive with mamma!” re- 
plied Ellie, and tripped off to the carriage which 
waited at the door. 

“I’ve been wondering all this afternoon if I can 
ever have seen her before. She looks very pretty and 
very good.” 

‘ ‘ Ellie was horn respectable, ’ ’ said Colonel Graing- 
er; “it’s a fearful handicap, and I fear she will never 
outgrow it. I foresee her doom; she will always be 
a chaperon.” 

He was a short, fair man, with jerky manners, and 
every soldier in India was his friend. 

“You’re just home from school, ain’t you?” he 
said. “So’s Ellie, you know.” 

“I want to have a girl friend very much,” said 
Herky. 

“Don’t let Ellie prose to you,” her father said; 
“ it is her fault — she proses a good bit, and she writes 
to schoolgirl friends every mail day.” 

“The girls at school did not care for me,” said 
Herky. “Miss Grove and the bootman were the only 
two congenial people whom I met there. I owe them 
much gratitude. The music master would have been 
genial, but I pressed his hand one day when he was 
in pain, and that was one of the many wrong things 


Snow upon the Desert 203 

I did at school. He was not allowed to be genial to 
me again.’ ’ 

4 ‘What else did you do wrong at school?” asked 
the Colonel in his high voice. “So far you seem to 
me to have only done the right thing. ’ 9 

“I did all the wrong things, really. There were 
so many rules that I could not remember them, and 
once when we were out riding I went over some fields 
and hedges. It was a pleasant ride, and the riding 
master did not seem displeased; hut the girls told 
me that I had made all their horses very wild.” 

“Frisky, they call it,” said the small, fair man. 
“When they begin to trot the girls lose all their 
hairpins, and when they get home each one is able 
to state accurately how many times her buckjumper 
has shied.” 

Herky began to laugh. 

“And they give confidences to each other about 
things that never occurred. Well, I don’t mind that, 
you know, because girls have done that ever since 
the beginning of the world, but I believe they love 
their teachers now, and boys go out to Alpine Club 
sports with their schoolmasters and skate hand in 
hand with them. That’s unwholesome, you know, 
and unnatural. Bless me, if you can’t hate your 
schoolmaster, whom are you going to hate?” 

“Oh, I like you so much!” exclaimed Herky. “I 
have not liked anyone so much for a long time. It is 
so nice of you to laugh at reproof, it makes things so 


204 Snow upon the Desert 

much easier; but, indeed, I did not give satisfaction 
at school. ’ ’ 

“Ellie was a monitor,’ ’ said Colonel Grainger with 
a depressed air. “Takes after her mother, I think. 
You see, I married a particularly well brought up 
woman, and I believe she might have done a lot better 
than marry me.” 

Ellie resembled her mother, who had once been 
good-looking and now was merely safe — safe beyond 
all powers of expression, safe within an armor of 
platitudes and received opinions. She wore the white 
flower of a blameless life conspicuously, and now she 
had fastened the white bud of it upon her daughter’s 
brow for all the world to see. That Ellie should have 
come out to India seemed to Mrs. Grainger a very 
happy thing for India. It was a disappointment 
that the young girl pronounced it 1 ‘ not a nice place. ’ ’ 
Her disapproval touched Mrs. Grainger profoundly, 
and she could only sigh and lay the blame upon her 
husband. For every small imperfection that could 
be found in Ellie he was held responsible, and Mrs. 
Grainger was able to trace any weakness in her 
daughter’s character to a paternal rather than to a 
maternal cause. If it ever remotely occurred to Colo- 
nel Grainger to find some fault in his only child it 
was met with the emphatic statement, “That’s 
Grainger. ’ ’ 

Ellie was the ostensible cause of much visiting 
which now took place between the Richardsons’ bun- 


205 


Snow upon the Desert 

galow and the Graingers’, and an interesting dis- 
covery was made only after several calls had been 
made — that Ellie had also been educated at the 
Priory. 

“Were you called Norah at school?” 

“Yes,” said Ellie, “I keep my little pet name for 
my home. You told us about elephants in the train.” 
Herky remembered the girl with the pink complex- 
ion, and thought she had never seen a color so beau- 
tiful until she once more met her school companion. 

Ellie proved to be a soberly affectionate young 
person, with her old, keen sense of other people’s 
duties still unimpaired. She could have given advice 
to everyone, from the Viceroy of India downward, 
and did so whenever occasion offered. But she was 
charmingly pretty, with an attractive way of dressing 
in plain frocks and dear, dowdy little hats. 

At present she was engaged in trying to convert 
her father, not on religious, but on social grounds. 
He weighed heavily upon her mind. Ellie could see 
no merit in being late for breakfast, and her father 
was frequently late. She thought men of his age 
should not make jokes, and she knitted him two dull- 
colored silk ties in order to discourage him from 
those which he had bought for himself. Ellie disap- 
proved of clubs, which engender thirst. She knew 
sport was cruel and games were a waste of time. Her 
father respected her, and disliked her company very 
much. She had a discouraging effect upon him, and 


206 Snow upon the Desert 

indeed the little woman did not seem to seize upon 
the more hopeful side of anyone’s character. So 
definitely did she know the difference between black 
and white that she could not, for instance, have be- 
lieved in the character of any woman who used 
powder. She had no two opinions about scent being 
“wrong,” and she was quite sure that palmistry was 
forbidden in the Bible. Young men thought she 
snubbed them, but, as a matter of fact, she was only 
trying to do them good. 

She was fond of Herky. A girl in deep mourning 
who did not go out much appealed to Ellie, and she 
would often come and sit in the bungalow of an after- 
noon and discuss hats and romance. Ellie told her 
innermost thoughts to her new friend, and gave her 
views upon many subjects. She was also sympa- 
thetic, and would frequently say, from a desire to 
invite confidences, “How is your Matthew?” 

Mr. Belt had not yet materialized in his ladylove’s 
mind as her Matthew, but she would sometimes read 
extracts from his letters in his business hand with 
its many flourishes, and would show the poor speci- 
mens of native embroidery for which he paid so 
largely and so much enjoyed sending her from time 
to time. 

‘ 1 Oh, Herky ! ’ ’ said Miss Grainger. “Is it the real 
romance ? ’ 9 

“Mr. Belt is not exactly romantic,” explained 
Herky. 


Snow upon the Desert 207 

“Have yon a photograph of him?” 

Miss Lascelles confessed that she had not. She 
had, indeed, omitted to ask Mr. Belt if he had such 
a thing, but he had confided to her two snapshots 
taken of his girls, and cut out from a school group. 

“They are a little fat, are they not?” said Miss 
Ellie. 

4 ‘ Their father is fat, ’ ’ admitted the fiancee. 

1 ‘ He may have a heart of gold, ’ * said the romantic 
young lady. 

“Oh, he has!” admitted the bride-elect. 

“When is the marriage to be?” 

“It will have to be soon,” said the invalid’s sad 
voice, “because the Richardsons are going home, but 
I have not heard from Mr. Belt for the last few days, 
and I do not know when he is coming back.” 

“He ought to write every day,” said Ellie. “I do 
hope there isn ’t a coldness ; it would be a terrible way 
to begin married life.” 

“Marriage is not everything,” began Miss Las- 
celles in a somewhat helpless voice, and as though 
following some line of thought of her own, while 
unconsciously withholding the context of her little 
speech. 

“Oh, but, Herky, it ought to be?” exclaimed Miss 
Grainger. 

“Yes, I’ve always heard that,” her girl friend 
replied. 

“And the man whom one marries ” 


208 Snow upon the Desert 

1 ‘ The man whom one marries, ’ ’ observed Miss Las- 
celles, ‘‘may, of course, not he the man one loves.” 

“That’s a frightfully wicked thing to say!” said 
Ellie without a moment’s hesitation. 

“My instincts are evil, I fear!” sighed her friend. 

“You should fight against them,” said Miss 
Grainger. 

It was much easier to speak to Colonel Grainger, 
because he never knew what people ought to do. 

Herky said to him one day, “Is there any way of 
getting news of the Yiali Expedition ? ’ ’ 

“Do you want special news of it?” he asked. 

It was Sunday evening, the weather was getting 
very hot now, and in the cool of the gloaming Colonel 
Grainger and Herky were sitting in the garden and 
upon the lawn of the Colonel’s house. Colonel 
Grainger lighted a cigarette and stretched his small 
frame luxuriously in a cane chair. He was a hard- 
working man, who was capable of leisure, and he 
was enjoying this evening on the lawn, which, to keep 
green, was a matter of absorbing interest with him. 
His guest who had come to spend the afternoon and 
evening possessed that most attractive quality of 
womanhood — she was always at hand when he wanted 
her, and presumably always ready for a chat. Ellie 
was conscientious and busy. To fill her mailbag 
alone meant so much employment that her father 
often felt that she only spared him a few minutes 
between the business of writing letters, while Mrs. 


209 


Snow upon the Desert 

Grainger seldom had a moment in which to sit down. 
They were now busy with pen and ink by the electric 
light in the drawing-room, while the moon was rising 
over the hot earth and climbing up the immeasurable 
blue of the tropical sky. Ellie had discovered that 
she could read the right time on the white dial of 
her watch even at ten o’clock at night, and she said 
so nearly every evening before she went to bed. 

“You are rather like someone I used to know,” 
Colonel Grainger said, beginning the conversation in 
his usual sudden manner. “I used to call her the 
Summer Number Girl, because she was exactly like 
those lovely pictures that you see on the outside 
covers of magazines which everyone admires, but 
most people think they ought to call bad art. Still, 
you know, they make the time pass very pleasantly — 
summer numbers do — and we can’t get on without 
them on a journey.” He waited for a while, and 
then said, ‘ ‘ I got a hit of a knock, and she married 
another fellow and was not happy — that was the 
worst of it.” 

“I think,” said Herky, “that love is always good, 
hut its rules are difficult to observe. It asks a good 
deal, hut it never asks nearly all one wants to give. 
That ought to make things simple enough.” She 
hesitated. 

“If you ever want to let off steam about anyone, 
you come to me,” he said. 

“I should like to ask your advice,” she said. 


210 Snow upon the Desert 

“No one ever found that much good,” he replied, 
with conviction; “but at least it is cheap and can be 
had for the asking.” 

“You see, I care for someone very much.” 

“Yes, I thought you did,” he said. 

“Not Mr. Belt,” she answered quickly. 

“No,” he said simply, “it couldn’t be Mr. Belt.” 

‘ ‘ 1 shall have to ask your advice, I am afraid, with- 
out giving you very much information.” 

“That is the way women generally ask advice,” 
he remarked. 

“Could you suppose a case,” she went on, not heed- 
ing the interruption, “where wrong had been done 
by a person who never meant to do wrong?” 

“Yes, I can understand that.” 

“And in which to put things right you might have 
to do what seemed to other people to be wrong?” 

“Yes,” he said gravely; “but it is too big a matter 
for a girl to decide for herself. She must take the 
accepted standard of things. One or two people in 
the world may understand if she does the right wrong 
thing, but no one else will, and they will make it un- 
pleasant for her. You had better stick to the old 
paths. You see, there are uncommonly sharp thorns 
growing where the earth has not been trampled down 
by heaps of people passing along on the same line 
of march.” 

“I have walked a good deal on snow and where 
there are no paths,” the girl replied; “perhaps if 


211 


Snow upon the Desert 

I ’d always walked on roads it might be different, but 
for me it seems that one sometimes has to make one ’s 
own path.” 

“I don’t like to think of rough roads for you,” he 
said kindly. 1 ‘Let’s quit analogies, Herky, and talk 
plain sense, you and I, because, being a fool, I al- 
ways lose my way unless I speak without what you 
might call flowers of speech. I think a woman had 
better marry the man she loves and nobody else, be- 
cause nobody else is a bit of good. Bless me, you 
may marry a man with half a dozen motorcars, but 
you won’t enjoy one of them if he is with you, 
whereas you get some fun out of a drive in a donkey 
cart if there’s a good fellow sitting on the board 
beside you.” 

“It sounds very pleasant,” said Miss Lascelles. 

Mrs. Grainger appeared on the lawn to ask if her 
husband had written to Gertrude. Gertrude would 
be offended if she did not get a letter, and it was 
foolish to talk about hating letter-writing, because, 
of course, everyone hated it, but duty must be 
thought of before pleasure, and there were many 
nights in which to enjoy moonlight, whereas mail 
day only came once a week. 

Colonel Grainger went indoors to ask for a sheet 
of blotting paper out of his daughter’s neat blotting 
book, and abused several bad pens in succession; and 
Mrs. Grainger thought and said, not for the first 
time, that men were curiously unrestrained, undis- 


212 Snow upon the Desert 

ciplined persons, and Herky said good night and 
drove homeward to the Richardsons’ bungalow. 

The Richardsons had begun to get in huge packing- 
cases from the godowns in which they lay all the 
winter, and in these they stored curtains and pictures 
whose value they believed in. The bungalow began 
to have a deserted look, with ugly patches on the 
walls where mirrors and photographs had once hung, 
and still Mr. Belt delayed his return. 

“ Nothing will look nice for the wedding if he does 
not come soon, ’ ’ said Mrs. Richardson. 

Herky wrote to him asking for news of his return, 
and got a letter in reply from Mr. Belt breaking off 
his engagement. 


Chapter XI 


M R. BELT was once more the victim of his own 
kind heart, and the affair this time was of an 
acuter and graver sort than had yet overtaken him. 
He had met a lady more beautiful and in deeper 
difficulties than usual. 

Their acquaintance had opened in a manner with 
which the soft-hearted financier was familiar. The 
lady had been robbed of her purse. Mr. Belt often 
wondered why it was that women should find it so 
difficult to discover their own pockets and that thieves 
should find them so easily. He opened his big palm 
with a pile of silver and gold in it, and begged the 
distressed fair one to help herself. Such temptations 
should not be strewn about the world. The lady took 
a few modest sovereigns and promised faithfully to 
let Mr. Belt know if she should be in want of any 
more. Fortunately he happened to be going to Mad- 
ras by the very train which she, either by previous 
arrangement or perhaps on the instant, proposed 
taking. This enabled Mr. Belt to secure her ticket 
for her and to be otherwise useful on the journey. 
Into his sympathetic ear she poured all her troubles 
213 


214 Snow upon the Desert 

of a lifetime. Her marriage had been one long mar- 
tyrdom, but fortunately her husband was now in the 
grave, where the wicked cease from troubling other 
people, and his widow was left to provide for her- 
self. Her sad experience did not seem to retard her 
from a desire once more to wear the martyr’s crown 
of matrimony, and she diligently sought a husband 
while ostensibly looking for a situation as a gov- 
erness. 

Mr. Belt sympathized, as he always did. “Shock- 
ing!” he said. “Brute!” He could not understand 
any man with a spark of good feeling behaving so 
badly to any woman. 

“You judge people by your own kind self,” sighed 
the lady, and indeed it was not too much to say that 
she was becoming warmly if not disinterestedly at- 
tached to the tender-hearted provider of limitless 
small change and of generous abuse of her departed 
husband. Success seemed in front of her — and matri- 
monial success means everything to a woman like 
herself, ill-trained, inefficient, with few friends, and 
with no social position whatever. Mrs. Bingham was 
dazzled by the prospect which she saw before her, 
and when the widower, counting upon her recipro- 
cal sympathy, told her he was engaged to a “very 
young lady at Lucknow, ’ ’ she felt for a moment as if 
her world had been hollowed out in front of her, 
leaving nothing but a horrible blank, and without a 
moment’s hesitation she entered upon the hazardoi^s 


Snow upon the Desert 215 

attempt of persuading a man to marry against his 
will. 

She had much to gain and little to lose, and if she 
acted vulgarly in order to get what she wanted, at 
least she acted both strongly and with decision. 

Mr. Belt was infinitely distressed. He persuaded, 
soothed, patted shoulders, and tried to show the lady 
that he had meant nothing by his attentions. Mrs. 
Bingham was obdurate, also she was unusually good- 
looking, and Mr. Belt was weak. Some typewritten 
letters which he had sent her had been signed with 
his own name, and Mrs. Bingham hinted darkly at 
the promises they contained. 

“I can only say,” said Mr. Belt, with what firm- 
ness he could muster, “that if I said it I didn’t mean 
it.” 

Once more his name would figure in newspaper 
paragraphs, once more his daughters would have to 
be persuaded not to read the morning journals, and 
once more his Stock Exchange friends would laugh. 

Marriage was the desperately wielded weapon with 
which Mrs. Bingham threatened the unfortunate 
widower, and a breach of promise case if he tried to 
get out of it. 

“If you had told me,” he wrote to the very young 
lady at Lucknow, “even so lately as last week that 
this would happen I would not have believed you.” 

Probably the disaster had been as little expected 
by himself as by his fiancee, and now he was won- 


216 Snow upon the Desert 

dering whether there was any other reparation to be 
made beyond leaving her well provided for in his 
will. “Or I might set that rotten concern on its 
legs again,” said the financier, “but ’pon my word 
they don’t deserve it!” 

Miss Lascelles finished reading Mr. Belt’s letter, 
and made one of her small and just observations 
when she said, ‘ ‘ This is not romantic. ’ 9 

1 ‘ It has happened before and it will happen 
again,” said Mrs. Antrobus, shrugging her shoulders, 
when she heard of the way in which freedom had 
come to her friend, and exultant over her escape. 

‘ ‘ I will write to her at once, ’ ’ she said, and began : 

“Dearest Herky: So it has all come to an end, 
and I am very glad. Of course, you won’t leave 
India now until Digby returns. Come to us for as 
long as ever you like.” 

She signed her name and tore the letter into little 
pieces. 

“Of course that won’t do at all,” she said. “I 
should not be a bit of use to her. If I could have 
got anyone else to be nice to her on board ship I 
would have retired gracefully. But everyone asked 
too many questions, and I was the only person suffi- 
ciently unprincipled to tell fibs about her. Mrs. 
Mackenzie would have pulverized her during the voy- 
age, and Mr. Belt would have got engaged to be 
married to her if I had not interfered upon all occa- 


217 


Snow upon the Desert 

sions. And now what is to be done? If she comes 
here Jack will flirt with her, which will frighten 
her very much, and everyone will say that she is 
going about with the wrong people. I suppose I 
must write something: 

“ Dearest Herky: I really am glad your engage- 
ment is at an end, and I hope you are glad too, and 
not worrying about it. Have you found friends to 
go and stay with, and what are your plans? Don’t 
leave India until Digby comes back. 

“Your loving, Bertha Antrobus.” 

She finished writing some other notes, and then 
went out and rode a man’s horse for him, because 
he had made her a bet that she would not do so. 
The horse was almost unbroken, and its owner should 
have hesitated to put a lady upon it. But Mrs. An- 
trobus was known as a fearless rider, and Major 
Sullivan had only dared her to ride the horse be- 
cause he loved to see the way she handled him. 

“I wish everyone had seen you,” he said, with an 
Irishman’s love of an audience, and when he came 
back he paid his debt with joy, and gave her his hand 
as she flung her knee from the pommel and slid from 
the saddle to the ground. 

“I’m not a circus rider,” Mrs. Antrobus said. 

“You’re a silly little devil,” said her husband, 
“and deserve to have your neck broken every time.” 

Mrs. Antrobus was not settling down as she grew 


218 Snow upon the Desert 

older. Ill-natured people said that she was one of 
those women who would flirt through twenty cold 
weathers out in India, and then go back to England 
and feel disappointed that they do not attract ad- 
miration among the youthful and blooming girls 
there. Her husband noticed her restlessness and said 
she seemed on wires. The ordinary worries which 
more domestic women find to occupy them never 
troubled her, and her health was too good to make 
nerves an excuse for her unequal spirits. 

“I used not to he a grumbler/ ’ she told herself 
when she began to he envious of every woman who 
lived in England, and had pleasant nurseries with 
healthy children in them, and English servants to 
wait upon them. She began even to discount the 
obvious advantages of a life sufficiently gay to tempt 
most people to a sojourn in the East. 

1 1 There are too many conditions imposed upon it, ’ ’ 
she cried, ‘ ‘ and all conditions have penalties attached 
to them.” 

Many women she knew would have made a greater 
success of her life than she had done — she was al- 
ways humble in her judgment of herself. But, after 
all, there were not so many successes to which women 
could attain. 

Her beauty she had always held in hut slight 
esteem — it must fade, of course, but what matter? 
But the need for permanency in something smote her 
sharply for a moment. All her life she had seen 


Snow upon the Desert 219 

people come and go; a two years’ friendship was al- 
most reckoned a long one. Hers was a world of 
shifting scenes in which trunks and packing cases 
were as familiar objects as any. 

She shook off a mood which was becoming too com- 
mon with her, and dressed and went and sat in the 
strong sunlight to watch a polo match, as she had 
watched hundreds of times before. 

The players sought her out in the pauses of the 
game, clad in the reds and blues of their two different 
sides, and seemed proud to talk to her. There had 
never been any stint in the homage she had received. 

At teatime they appeared in her drawing-room, 
brushed and with smooth damp hair. They were 
well-bred, speechless young men, with damaged knees, 
who brought their tales of ponies and their shy man- 
ners to the well-filled table. Afterward many of 
them came to dine. The Antrobuses were deeply in 
debt and everyone knew it, but their dinners were 
excellent, and Jack always insisted upon having 
champagne. 

“The boys like it,” he said. 

“No, they do not,” responded his wife quickly, 
“or if they do they are all well aware that we are 
in debt and they would much rather not have it.” 

“Look here, Bertha, leave the drinks to me, will 
you? I don’t interfere with your department.” 

“You like the house to he popular, Jack,” she 
said; “and I, of course, like these hoys, out here 


220 Snow upon the Desert 

without homes, to be happy. But popularity must 
not be too heavily paid for; it is horrible !” 

“Everything has to be paid for,” Jack said; “you 
get nothing for nothing in this world, and jolly little 
for eighteen-pence.” 

“Mrs. Richardson is the woman they like,” Mrs. 
Antrobus said, ‘ ‘ and she wears a tucker in her riding- 
habit, and her husband holds classes for young men 
on Sunday afternoons.” 

“She’s a damned good woman,” Jack said, “and 
I wish there were more like her. But you and I, 
my dear, left off singing hymns round the piano when 
we were about five and fifteen years old respectively. 
I’m afraid we cannot rely on tea and tracts now for 
popularity. ’ ’ 

“Mrs. Richardson had thirty years of English life 
to form her character before she came to India.” 

“And you were born in a bungalow,” he said, 
“and sent home as a fat baby to your relations until 
you were strong enough to stand the hot weather 
again. ’ ’ 

“I believe I ought to have been sent to a Hill 
school,” she said. “I ought never to have seen Eng- 
land.” 

“It is silly rot your crabbing India,” he said 
irritably; “you get a jolly good time out here.” 

He finished the argument by turning over the 
leaves of his newspaper noisily. 

Mrs. Antrobus went to dress for dinner. She and 


Snow upon the Desert 221 

her husband never dined alone when it could be 
avoided, and to-night some six or eight young men 
were coming. The dinner was good, and the well- 
ordered table was charmingly decorated with flowers. 

Colonel Antrobus seemed anxious that his friends 
should eat and drink more than they felt inclined. 
He was a man with whom the offer of a whisky and 
soda was not so much a token of hospitality as a 
threat. To refuse meant seriously to offend him, and 
in a noisy, bluff way he swore continually at his 
servants for not handing the decanters often enough. 

Mrs. Antrobus saved the small dinner party from 
being awkward or merely boring by suddenly revert- 
ing to one of her old moods with its always fresh 
surprises. She began to enjoy the evening. The 
admiration which her guests bestowed upon her was 
in itself a graceful tribute to her wit, and it was 
rendered by men of excellent manners and with a 
sort of traditional respectfulness which has made 
chivalry itself good form. Mrs. Richardson might 
speak to them of their homes; Mrs. Antrobus domi- 
nated them by her charm, and was never more bril- 
liant than to-night. Even the shyest and most silent 
of her guests began to put forth some power of 
pleasing, and she rewarded their efforts by interpret- 
ing them in a manner much more brilliant than they 
had discovered for themselves. 

Not many of them had been in England lately, 
and she must tell them what plays were being acted 


222 Snow upon the Desert 

at the various theaters, and the songs that were being 
sung. They must even hear what were the catch- 
words of the music-halls from her. Above all, she 
must show them some acting herself. It was years 
since she had acted, but to-night she would play for 
them ! In her hands a couple of Indian shawls could 
serve as almost any sort of descriptive garment. She 
wound one round her head, and became the imper- 
sonation of a character in a Greek tragedy which 
had been played to empty stalls in London. And the 
next moment it was a scarf in her hands, and with a 
place cleared in the middle of the room she was imi- 
tating the actions of one of the greatest dancers in 
Europe. Someone sat down at the piano and played 
with some taste and excellent rhythm the music 
which she suggested. Mrs. Antrobus became Terpsi- 
chore inspired, with waving hands, floating draperies 
and arms rising and falling in some magic rhythm 
which interpreted every heat of the music at the 
piano. When it was over she could he Miss Blossom 
with a poke bonnet on. 

“Give us Queen Katherine,” someone cried, and 
with a shawl trailing great lengths behind her, she 
was at the feet of the mean king, craving her honor- 
able position as his wife. 

As a mimic she had always been inimitable, but 
to-night she was once more intoxicated with the 
passion of acting. The words of the play came 
unfalteringly to her tongue, and the gestures of the 


223 


Snow upon the Desert 

woman who pleads had in them all the simplicity 
of great tragedy. Even without the accessories of 
stage paint and powder Mrs. Antrohus looked more 
beautiful when acting than at any other time. 

Jack looked on and laughed. This acting was a 
side show to him, and a very clever one. He was 
always genial after dinner, and believed himself to 
be popular among his friends. He clapped his hands 
and said, “ Ton my word, Bertha, you are as clever 
as a monkey. ’ ’ 

Now she was the Dame aux C amelias. The stage 
properties were a table and a chair, drawn forward 
into the middle of the room. She seated herself, 
and laying her arms upon the table she put her 
case before the men who had asked her to give up 
all that made her life. Then, as the supreme tragedy 
of the play became intenser, the English translation 
with which she had begun seemed to be too poor 
for her, or the English tongue was too slow, and she 
began to speak rapidly in French. 4 ‘Jamais, 
jamais!” she cried, pleading with all her strength 
for herself, for her own right, her own love. 

The tragedy was far too big for common life. 
This dinner-party of young men, why should they 
be stirred and wrought upon, beyond that point 
which leaves concealment of emotion impossible ? 
In the darkness of a theater who knows or cares 
if a man’s face twitches? But in the full glare of 
a drawing-room has any woman the right to weep 


224 Snow upon the Desert 

and to call forth a corresponding depth of feeling 
from others? 

They cheered her when she ran away to remove 
her shawls, but the situation was too tense for com- 
mon life. 

Colonel Antrohus became sulky, and found an 
excuse for it by saying, * ‘ She never acts when I ask 
her. I can’t think what’s come over her to-night.” 
He was proud of her acting, but she carried things 
too far. 


Chapter XII 


T REALLY do not see any particular reason why 
she should not come, ’ ’ said Mrs. Grainger doubt- 
fully. 

The Richardsons were starting for home, and 
Colonel Grainger had suggested that Miss Lascelles 
might come for a hot-weather trip to Kashmir with 
himself and his wife and Miss Ellie. 

“I really don’t see any particular reason why she 
shouldn’t come,” repeated Mrs. Grainger, who was 
an adept at finding flaws in all proposals that other 
people made. 

“It is providential, I think,” said the Colonel. It 
is possible that he had been waiting for the ever- 
lasting and invariable “nay” from his wife, and the 
fact that it had not been uttered was almost agitating. 

‘ ‘ Dear Loftie, how you do exaggerate things ! ’ ’ said 
his wife indulgently. 

“Still, you know,” he persisted, “it ought really 
to be very pleasant having her with us. ’ ’ 

“I hope she will be very grateful,” said Mrs. 
Grainger. 

She gave her invitation and was not surprised 
when it was joyfully accepted. 

225 


226 


Snow upon the Desert 

When Mrs. Grainger invited people to tea she 
always remembered to order in cakes, and sent out 
her notes as though bidding her friends to some semi- 
state affair at Buckingham Palace. Her tea-parties 
had become notable, not only on account of the ex- 
cellence of the cakes, but because the company was 
always well chosen ; and it used to grieve her to find 
her husband hiding among the bamboos at the far 
end of the garden on these magnificent occasions, and 
protesting that his wife and daughter were in far too 
exalted circles for a plain man like himself. 

This was Mrs. Grainger’s first visit to India, and 
she liked to insist upon the fact, in which she saw 
some merit. To have lived long in India seemed to 
her almost as great a social disadvantage as to have 
been born in Manchester. She was quick to detect 
a “chee-chee” accent in anyone and suspected a 
“touch of the tar-brush” everywhere. 

“India is very provincial, for all its size,” she 
often used to say, and she believed that to have any 
knowledge of its customs “stamped” a woman at 
once ; in men it was pardonable, but even men should 
not speak Hindustani too well. 

She had great social gifts, and Colonel Grainger 
had long ago learned how fatal such gifts are. They 
were indivorceable in his mind from the ritual of 
leaving cards. He supposed gravely that no other 
woman on this earth could leave as many as Mrs. 
Grainger did. She never arrived anywhere without 


227 


Snow upon the Desert 

distributing them so generously and zealously that 
an economical person collecting them might soon have 
papered a room with the groups of three which she 
scattered so lavishly. Messages were written on 
cards; illness or death caused them to flutter like 
snow-flakes. Farewells have a different significance 
with different people. To Major Richardson they 
meant departing trains and alert solicitations about 
luggage. To others the very word conjures up a 
vision of clasped hand or tearful eye. To Mrs. 
Grainger they meant P.P.C. in the corner of a 
turned-down visiting-card. The little tin box which 
hung at her gate was fuller than any other at the 
station. Corresponding white pasteboards fluttered 
back like homing doves from all quarters. Her hus- 
band, when he drove her in the tum-tum, used to 
fancy that, where a card-box was nailed to a tree or 
to a gate-post, there the pony, like himself, by force 
of habit, stopped. With a little training he thought 
it might be taught to drop the pasteboard into the 
slit without troubling anyone to get down. 

‘‘I wonder,” said the Colonel, 4 ‘when women will 
learn that paying calls is a nervous disease?” 

He had persuaded his wife that even in Kashmir 
there is scope for visiting, and fortified by this as- 
surance Mrs. Grainger started heroically for Gul- 
marg. 

Many of us have changed horses on the long 
upward road into Kashmir, and have met travelers 


228 Snow upon the Desert 

going and coming at the dak bungalows, and have 
gathered maidenhair fern growing on dripping rocks, 
and watched the monkeys on the road while the tonga 
creaked, and the luggage strapped outside on the tilt 
got wet with mountain showers, and the unmended 
road showed its old rents and tears at which travelers 
have broken down for many years. And, like every- 
one else, we have commented upon this explicitly. 

But it is the Jhelum road into Kashmir, and if it 
were ten times worse it is still a glorious holiday 
road — one of the roads of the world. 

It is pleasant after the rough journeying to find 
oneself in the gliding houseboat at Barramulla, 
slipping along through the placid waters with the 
blue sky overhead and the sunshine setting the water 
alight. The fields, enameled thick with purple iris, 
are pale lilac in color; out of them the snow-hills 
rise abruptly, but the tasseled green of early bud- 
ding branches by the water’s edge tempers their 
blinding whiteness. 

Lavender and white, and blue and pale green ! It 
is a wonderful world! The gray-clad Kashmiris on 
the towing-path bend to the line which hauls the 
broad flat-bottomed boat, their shoulders bowed and 
ropes harnessed across their breasts, wading knee- 
deep in flowers. The ripple of water about the bows 
of the houseboat, the pipe of nesting birds, and the 
cries of the gray-clad figures on the towing-paths 
calling to each other, are all that break the silence. 


229 


Snow upon the Desert 

In our wake comes the cooking-boat — most primitive 
of kitchens — and the native butler when dinner is 
ready pulls it alongside and hands us dishes through 
the window of the little saloon. There are deck- 
chairs in the forward cabin through which the cool 
air rushes, and on the roof of the boat we spread 
rugs and pillows, while dreamy sounds lull us into 
pleasant noontide sleep. We ransack the primitive 
shelves of the houseboat library and discover novels 
of long ago, which we read when we were children. 
To-day we fall asleep over them, and dreams are 
pleasantly filled with the quaint precise diction of the 
old writers. The pleasant day drifts by and the boat 
glides onward with it till the evening, when the 
praying Moslems, kneeling toward the sun, make it 
seem as though the evening light had a touch of 
sacredness in it like lamps burning in a shrine. 

On the third day of calm voyaging the boat glides 
between the banks of the river, on either side of 
which lies the old, earthquake-shaken town of Srin- 
agar, with its patched houses and the domes of its 
temples mended with kerosene tins. The place is not 
free from odors, and yet the enchantment of it over- 
rules every objection that can be made against it. 

By the river ’s brim are long lines of shivering pop- 
lars, and women in deep orange raiment going down 
to broad flights of moss-grown stones to the water’s 
edge to take the muddy contents of the Jhelum for 
use in their homes; men scouring brass pots till 


230 Snow upon the Desert 

they shine like lamps, and setting them, all un- 
conscious of the picture, on the greens and grays of 
the old stone stairs. Curly-headed brown children 
playing about in the mud, boats gliding hither and 
thither, now down the stream with slow, easy strokes 
of their short oars, or again battling up the river in 
the race of the water under the bridges. And above 
the stir of river life, and the gossiping natives, and 
English ladies sketching or buying in the bazars, 
and the sound of voices, rise the snow-hills and the 
old river fort and the Takt set like a beacon on the 
gray rocks. 

“ I have heard it said,” Herky said to Colonel 
Grainger, “that the sea is the only thing that cures 
some people of sadness. I think only hills could ever 
be a comfort to me.” 

“Hills give you a queer feeling,” he said, in his 
jerky way; “you want to get to the top of them and 
you don’t know why. It is not to see the view or 
to say you have done it ; it is only just to get to the 
top. I suppose clever people would tell you that 
there is a sort of analogy between them and aspira- 
tion, and all that sort of thing, but you and I, Herky, 
not being a bit clever, thank God, only feel that it 
is rather a good thing to have a good high peak in 
front of us.” 

“I like that,” she said. 

“Mind you, I don’t get near the snows myself,” 
he finished up with his high-pitched laugh. 


231 


Snow upon the Desert 

Mrs. Grainger went to the post office at once and 
inquired for letters, and got a pile of them. The 
houseboat found moorings underneath the poplar 
trees, and, like voyagers who have been at sea many 
a day, the feeling of the earth is good under the 
feet of those who have come but a three days’ river 
journey in calm water. 

“I call this very jolly,” said Colonel Grainger, 
enjoying afternoon tea spread on the river’s bank, 
and shouting greetings to the sellers of trinkets and 
tray-cloths, whom he had known on a previous visit, 
and with whom Mrs. Grainger drove many an ex- 
cellent bargain. 

The small saloon began to be crowded with photo- 
graph frames and boxes in papier-mache, brass bowls 
for flowers appeared on the tables, curtains and 
draperies were hung across the windows. Even Mrs. 
Grainger, a prudent woman, who turned away her 
eyes from temptations, as a rule, was powerless to 
resist the joy of bargaining with a native in charge 
of a boat full of embroideries gliding up to the 
windows of the saloon, and showing his head un- 
expectedly between the curtains. 

“I hope Gulmarg will be as nice as this,” said 
Ellie, who loved a little shopping. 

Colonel Grainger, in a childish manner, alluded 
to the buns that could be got there, and Herky said : 
“I believe I have a friend there whom I met coming 
out on board the ‘Bolivia’; she was an elderly woman 


232 Snow upon the Desert 

called Mrs. Mackenzie ; it seems she will be a neighbor 
of ours. ’ ’ % 

“You talk of a woman called Mrs. Mackenzie !” 
exclaimed Colonel Grainger, “as if there were two 
Mrs. Mackenzies in the world. There is only one; 
there never could be more than one; there never 
has been more than one. She dominates the entire 
great Indian peninsula. I have met her in Madras, 
and I have met her in Bengal, and in every stretch 
of country in between, and I ’ve never taken a 
journey home to England without encountering her. 
She lays bare all my past before me, and sings 
Scottish songs when I would fain go to sleep. 
Mrs. Mackenzie ! ’ ’ He ran his fingers wildly through 
his hair. ‘ ‘ Mrs. Mackenzie at large in Kashmir. Now 
Heaven help us! We shall have banks and^braes 
and burnies before we know where we are.” 

The weather was growing hotter, and with the 
heat came torrents of rain. The river was in flood, 
and the houseboats, which had lain snug and shel- 
tered under the river’s bank, rose higher and higher. 
Some low-lying houses by the water’s edge were 
threatened with destruction, and summer visitors in 
their snug plank dwellings sat within the small 
saloons of their houseboats, and as they watched the 
rain dripping outside could at least feel thankful 
that they were not in tents. The mud-colored river 
flowed by sullenly, with great lumps of foam, brought 
from torrents far up the valleys, floating on its sur- 


Snow upon the Desert 233 

face. The river banks were soft and unsafe in parts, 
and even Hill ponies could not keep their feet, hut 
slid dismally on the sticky roads. 

“I do not like this at all,” said Mrs. Grainger. 

“We might he moving on to Gulmarg,” said her 
husband, who, however, had enjoyed the excitement 
of the floods. 

“I must write my name first,” said Mrs. Grainger, 
alluding to the duty which she owed to the Resident. 

At the top of a hill there lies a plain which looks 
like a green saucer with a fringe of pines round it. 
This green saucer is a playground. Looking down 
at it from one of the surrounding hills one is re- 
minded of a child’s table of games, in which one 
little corner is marked out for tin horses and the 
race-game, and another is a miniature croquet 
ground, and the larger part is a golf links studded 
with some shaven lawns, on which figures group 
themselves for a time and then disperse in pursuit 
of something which is not visible from the hill-top. 
The playground is a pleasant one, and even those 
dear people who can remember a place twenty years 
ago cannot say that it is spoilt yet. 

In the chill of the evening log-fires are lighted 
early, and the hills are often veiled in mist, but 
Nanga Parbat appears sometime jewel-like against 
the sky, and the vision which is afforded may be 
stored in the memory to be used gratefully when 
the world is dull and level again. 


234 Snow upon the Desert 

Mrs. Grainger was, and knew herself to be, the 
best wife in the world. She had thought of every- 
thing suitable to a brief journey on a houseboat, 
and now in the same way her practical mind had 
readily seen what would be necessary for the forest 
lodge to which she was bound. Even as she sat in 
the “ dandy’ ’ (overflowing it a little on either side) 
which had brought her to the hill-top, she was making 
notes in her pocketbook, and now she stopped at the 
cluster of huts forming an entrance to the green 
saucer and ordered fruit, and called a halt at the 
English chemist and developer of photograph films, 
to whom she handed in a written list of requirements. 
She carried with her always several silver photo- 
graph frames, a few leather-bound blotting-books, 
many silk cushion-covers, some draperies and rugs. 
With these and given one hour in which to “pull 
the furniture about,” she could triumph over the 
barest scene of discomfort. And so keen was her 
enjoyment in this occupation that she imposed upon 
herself the right to behave like a martyr until the 
task was finished, and she could turn to her husband 
and say, “I am exhausted. Now for goodness’ sake, 
Loftus, don’t upset everything the first night.” 

He was a man who loved small houses and odd 
contrivances; one who liked to put up little shelves 
and books everywhere; and this Mrs. Grainger al- 
lowed, while inwardly believing that it spoilt the 
look of everything. She knew when to give in to 


235 


Snow upon the Desert 

him and had, for instance, submitted to tobacco- 
pipes if they were put into their proper places after 
they had been used. 

“If he has not a little room to himself, I know 
what to expect,” said Mrs. Grainger, who had made 
up her mind not to be irritated by his untidiness in 
her drawing-room during their stay in small quar- 
ters, and she put the cushions of the little sofa in 
exact position, while preparing herself to see them 
heaped in a corner or scattered anywhere before long. 

“Marriage,” she often said, “teaches one infinite 
patience.” 

The garden was filed with blue mountain flowers. 
There was a little yard behind, “where,” said Ellie, 
“if only I could keep some chickens I could be per- 
fectly happy.” Some stumps of trees cut down and 
filled with mould formed flower-baskets on the lawn, 
muslin curtains hung at the windows, a homely smell 
of cooking greeted them from the cooking-house at 
the back of the bungalow, and Mrs. Grainger, clad in 
a blouse for dinner and with her house already in 
perfect order and as neat as she would always like 
to see it, sat down voluminously in an armchair and 
said from the bottom of her heart, “Well!” 

Ellie did not mean to give up her reading, even 
on a holiday, and she conscientiously sat with Mil- 
ton’s “Paradise Lost” in front of her and her watch 
beside it for half an hour every day. She belonged 
to a reading society, to which she contributed half a 


236 


Snow upon the Desert 

crown a year, and was supplied by it with works by 
standard authors. Herky filled vases with flowers 
and trails of mountain berries, and Mrs. Grainger, 
who honestly believed that British supremacy and 
Empire-making had something to do with paying 
calls, put on a suitable hat and went to see Mrs. 
Mackenzie. 

“ Quite unfashionable !’ ’ cried Mrs. Mackenzie, as 
she saw mother and daughter coming up the rough 
little garden path to the wooden porch of the house, 
‘ ‘ for no one pays calls here. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Grainger thought that Loftus had, as usual, 
exaggerated in his description' of the merits of the 
place. 

“We look to you to tell us all the news,” Mrs. 
Grainger said. “Anything more disappointing than 
Srinagar it would be impossible to imagine. It rained 
every day.” 

“You must expect that in the monsoon,” said 
Mrs. Mackenzie, who knew every variation in the 
climate of India and talked Hindustani like a native. 

“Loftus should have told me,” said Mrs. Grainger. 
This was her first experience of the hot weather, 
which she still called the summer, in order not to be 
mistaken for an Anglo-Indian. 

“Well, you had the young people to keep you 
cheery,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, who, having been 
Warned by her excellent old husband to hold her 
tongue about “the lassie,” was determined to ap- 


Snow upon the Desert 237 

proach the subject of Miss Lascelles, whose history 
she had followed with some interest. 

“My daughter has a little friend with her, who 
we hope will spend the summer with us,” said Mrs. 
Grainger, and gave sufficient pause for some 
parenthetic kind remarks to be made about her hos- 
pitality to the orphan girl. 

‘ * Oh ! ’ ’ said Mrs. Mackenzie. 

“Herky wants a little training and direction,” 
Ellie ’s mother went on, “but we find her most docile 
and sweet, and she certainly is improving.” 

Had Robert not made his wishes very clear, Mrs. 
Mackenzie might have said much more than she did. 

“She came out to India with Mrs. Antrobus,” 
Mrs. Grainger went on. 

“I am sure anyone who tries to wean her from 
that friendship is doing a good work,” quoth Mrs. 
Mackenzie. 

“I hardly know her,” said Mrs. Grainger, and 
one felt that the worst had been said of the much- 
discussed absent lady. 

“I hear she’s still got Major Eden dangling after 
her,” said the Scotswoman. 

Mrs. Grainger glanced at Ellie and remarked, 
“Yes, I believe so.” 

“He has been staying at Simla,” went on Mrs. 
Mackenzie, who thought girls were a mistake at an 
afternoon call. “Would you like to see the garden, 
my dear?” but Ellie, in whom the love of social 


238 


Snow upon the Desert 

intercourse was an hereditary instinct, replied 
prettily that she was a little tired and would rather 
stay indoors. 

“I had not heard that,” said Mrs. Grainger. 

‘ ‘ Oh, it is the Nicholson affair all over again, ’ ’ said 
Mrs. Mackenzie. 

“I do not approve of gossip,” said Ellie, in her 
gentle, snubbing way. 

“Ellie has very high principles,” explained Mrs. 
Grainger. 

4 ‘ Oh, so has Miss Lai&elles ! ’ ’ said Mrs. Mackenzie. 

She often gave to her good husband an account of 
the things people had said when he came in in the 
evening from his work or from a golf match, and 
she would point out the humor of them with great 
enjoyment. To-night she gave him the whole ac- 
count of the conversation and of its cross-purposes, 
and Robert Mackenzie said, “Well, for God’s sake, 
Jinnet, don’t set people’s tongues wagging about the 
gurrul. ’ ’ 

Mrs. Mackenzie promised not to say a word, and 
to this day she probably believes that she did not. 

Mrs. Grainger was her own ideal of a woman of 
sense, and she often allowed Loftus a harmless 
friendship with some girl. It kept him amused, and 
filled up the leisure which Mrs. Grainger believed 
men possessed in an excessive degree. She was 
affably disposed toward her young guest, and even 
chaffed her about her friendship for Colonel 


239 


Snow upon the Desert 

Grainger. This was a sure sign of her approbation. 

She felt that her own sound principles combined 
with her breadth of mind were best evinced by the 
perfect freedom which she believed she gave her 
husband. More subtle was her belief that the toler- 
ance which it must be admitted was enforced upon 
her was somehow the outcome of her own knowledge 
of love-affairs which she had gained at first hand in 
some fictitious and wholly unrecognizable past. On 
this subject she was often playful where one least 
expected her to be so, and confronted by Colonel 
Grainger’s foolishness she frequently said, in a sport- 
ive manner and in her own safe and wilfully harm- 
less way, “I always declare if I had not married 
Loftus I should have been a bad woman.” 

Colonel Grainger knew the remark well, and had 
been trained to accept it as a compliment to himself 
and homage to Mrs. Grainger’s fictitious past. He 
was too loyal to wonder where were those ranks of 
rejected aspirants to her hand before whom he had 
been chosen, or where indeed were the admirers that 
might have beset her matronly way had she not 
married him. He remembered one touching incident 
shortly after their marriage, when she had pressed 
into his hand various bundles of letters tied with 
colored ribbons, and had told him she thought it only 
right that these should be destroyed. Loftus burned 
them unread, and that same evening he noticed 
that one or two photographs of anaemic-looking young 


240 Snow upon the Desert 

men had been torn from their frames, and had evi- 
dently been ruthlessly and virtuously burned. This 
was the only glimpse he had ever had of them, and 
with a loyal desire to be jealous he had nevertheless 
been unable to regard them as a menace to his peace. 

To-night she wanted a little talk with him before 
he went to bed, and she appeared in the small 
drawing-room, with its plain wooden walls, its 
basket chairs and silk cushions, clad in a crimson 
flannel dressing-gown trimmed with crimson flannel 
frills. She was taller than her husband, and he was 
always rather afraid of the crimson flannel dressing- 
gown, which was connected in his mind with heart- 
to-heart talks. He welcomed her to a chair beside 
the fire of logs, hoped she did not mind the smell of 
his cigar, and remarked that he was having a little 
unwonted whisky and soda owing to the unusual 
cold of the evening. 

“Loftus,” said Mrs. Grainger, “is there anything 
about that girl?” 

The construction of her sentence being faulty to 
the verge of obscurity, Colonel Grainger may be 
excused for saying that he did not quite understand. 

“Do not prevaricate,” said Mrs. Grainger. 

“Well, then,” he said, “there is not one single 
reason in heaven or earth why anyone shouldn’t 
know her.” 

“That looks,” said his wife, “as if you were try- 
ing to conceal something.” 


241 


Snow upon the Desert 

“There is nothing to conceal,” he said. 

“I detest gossip,” said Mrs. Grainger, “and if I 
were going to live long in India I should make it a 
rule that there was no gossip heard inside my house. 
Ellie spoke up very prettily on the subject this after- 
noon. I was much struck by the little creature’s 
courage. ’ ’ 

“Yes, hut what on earth can people say about 
Herky?” pursued Colonel Grainger. 

“I hate repeating it,” Mrs. Grainger replied, “be- 
cause there was so little to take hold of, hut I didn’t 
quite like something Mrs. Mackenzie said about her. ’ ’ 

Colonel Grainger proceeded to state at some 
length what he thought about Mrs. Mackenzie. The 
irritable expressions of a man who has been asked 
for explanations, which he is unable to give, need not 
be repeated. 

“I’m not suspicious,” went on Mrs. Grainger, 
unmoved by the storm she had provoked, “but, of 
course, with a young girl in the house one can’t be 
too careful.” 

“My dear, you talk almost as if I wish to keep 
something back from you.” 

“You are sometimes deceitful, Loftus,” said his 
wife. 

In all the years that she had been married to him 
Mrs. Grainger had never understood her husband. 
He was a sensitive man and she was unaware of the 
fact. If she annoyed him or got on his nerves she 


242 


Snow upon the Desert 

was unaware of that, too. She did not even know 
how much he disliked her crimson dressing-gown. 

Her views of life were in everything different from 
his, and she knew hers to be right. In time, Colonel 
Grainger had come to think so, too, and he generally 
appraised her at her own valuation. He respected 
her, and called her with loyal playfulness ‘ ‘ his 
missus.” When she told him, as she frequently did, 
that during the whole of the unsettled life into 
which marriage with him had involved her, he had 
always had a comfortable home, there was some 
truth in the statement. Her hills were paid regu- 
larly, her servants were not allowed to waste, her 
accounts were faultlessly balanced. 

“The trouble is,” the Colonel used to say, “that 
there is not much margin about these sort of ac- 
counts.” Too well did Mrs. Grainger know exactly 
how much his own allowance was, and how it was 
spent. If he lost at cards there was no good putting 
that down as sundries. In Mrs. Grainger’s ledger 
there were no such things as sundries. She herself 
never got into debt and such expressions as “stoney 
broke,” or “heavily dipped,” seemed to her unpar- 
donable. 

“Susan,” Colonel Grainger used to think, “has 
got her father ’s legal mind. It is a great gift. ’ ’ He 
had been playing Bridge a good deal lately, and had 
been playing very badly. 

“Why play at all,” Mrs. Grainger said, “if you 


Snow upon the Desert 243 

cannot play well? Remember, Loftus, the ponies 
have got to go if there are any more debts. ” 

“It is the fall of the cards, Susan,” explained 
Loftus, and wished he could be more explicit. 

“A gambler’s invariable excuse,” commented Mrs. 
Grainger. 

“You must win it back from Mr. Mackenzie to- 
night,” said Herky consolingly; “we are going to 
dine there, and play cards after dinner.” 

“Old Mackenzie insists upon playing whist still, 
and he is certain to win,” said the Colonel dismally. 
“I never yet knew a man with a handsome income 
who didn’t win at cards. By the way, has Mrs. 
Mackenzie asked us all to come?” 

‘ ‘ I believe we are all asked. ’ ’ 

He frowned slightly. Why did people not ask 
this pretty girl more often to their little teas and 
picnics? It would have done her good to go out a 
little, and he had made a point of encouraging her 
to wear white dresses to show that her first period of 
mourning was over. 

Mrs. Mackenzie’s dinner-party was one of eight. 
When Miss Laseelles arrived with her friends it was 
obvious that she was not expected. “It’s all right, 
it’s all right,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. “I said ‘one 
of the girls.’ You see, our dining-room is such a 
wee poke of a room! But it’s all right; it’s all 
right.” 

The kitmutgar, whom Mrs. Grainger insisted upon 


244 Snow upon the Desert 

calling “the native butler/’ was summoned, and old 
Mackenzie bustled about to see that a ninth place 
was laid, and when the time came for going into 
dinner he said jocosely: “You gurruls will have to 
draw lots for Mr. Blair. ’ ’ 

Colonel Grainger found a chair for the unexpected 
guest near his own, and neglected the lady on his 
other side in order to talk to her. 

Something seemed to he wrong, and he was un- 
happy without being able to explain the cause of it. 

The dinner-party was not a lively one. Mr. Blair, 
who had been invited to entertain Miss Grainger, 
was heroic in his efforts to make his small amount 
of conversation do duty for both young ladies. He 
was a brick-colored young man with light hair, who 
perspired audibly in his efforts to think of something 
to say. 

“Young people at a dinner-party are a mistake,” 
said Mrs. Mackenzie. 

After dinner two whist tables were arranged in 
the drawing-room, in comfortable proximity to a fire 
of logs, and Mrs. Mackenzie said good-naturedly: 
“No, no, my dear, you play and I will look on; I 
do not mind a bit.” 

“I would much rather play ‘Old Maid,’ ” said 
Ellie; “it is less gambling.” 

“And I hardly know how to play whist,” pleaded 
Herky. 

In the midst of the friendly disagreement Mr. 


245 


Snow upon the Desert 

Macfarlane of the Woods and Forest came in. He 
did not expect for a minute, by Jove, to find anyone 
here, but thought he might come in and smoke a 
pipe with Mr. Mackenzie. 

He was hailed as a fellow Scot by his hostess, but 
declared himself a non-player at whist. 

“Then let the lassies play,” said old Mackenzie, 
“and you and Macfarlane, my dear, sit by and have 
a crack, or you might give us a little music.” 

He opened the piano, and persuaded his wife, 
whose singing he admired, to provide vocal accom- 
paniment for the party. She complied, taking off her 
bangles and rings, and playing without her notes, 
while keeping her eyes on the whist tables the while. 

“Maxwelton’s braes are bonny,” she sang “where 
airly fa’s the dew-hoo,” and continued her mental 
observations. 

“Robert is soft about girls,” she said to herself, 
“but I cannot see why she should go scot-free be- 
cause she has gray eyes, and a pretty figure which 
they make a fuss about. Had she been plainer there 
wouldn’t he so many excuses made for her.” 

Mrs. Mackenzie recalled the fact, which she was 
unable conscientiously to regret, that Mr. Belt had 
himself broken off his engagement with her. “Even 
an old reprobate like that!” she said. Mrs. Mack- 
enzie had always been a little hard on Mr. Belt. 

Now, whether the following incident was inten- 
tional or not, no one likes to say to this day. Its hare 


246 Snow upon the Desert 

outlines were as follows. A golf tournament was in 
prospect, and much was heard about ladies’ mixed 
and men’s doubles, and there were champion players 
on either side in whom everyone believed, and there 
was Miss Rivers, who was a tall and handsome girl, 
with a disdainful manner. She drew Miss Lascelles 
for her partner, and when the day of the tournament 
came this handsome girl, who was reported to be 
bad-tempered but a fine lofter, changed her mind 
about playing. A high sense of dramatic thrill was 
attained that evening after tea at the Club House — 
a place to which Mrs. Grainger, as she frequently 
pointed out, hardly ever went. Colonel Grainger 
loved the place and its buns, and to-day he was in 
great spirits, having decided, as he said, to lay all his 
money on his own stable, and he congratulated Herky 
on having drawn so good a partner. 

“I don’t think I shall play,” said Miss Rivers, “I 
put down my name without thinking.” 

“Oh, you can’t scratch at the eleventh hour,” said 
Colonel Grainger, expostulating, and then something 
in the disdainful girl’s manner caused him to believe 
that she was not playing because she objected to her 
partner. 

“Of course,” said the Colonel, stammering badly, 
and with his small fair face flushed, ‘ * if there is to be 
a change of partners I hope Miss Lascelles will play 
with my daughter.” 

‘ ‘ Where lots are drawn players must either scratch 


247 


Snow upon the Desert 

or play, ’ ’ someone told him ; and the secretary of the 
club said in an aside to him, “It will make far less 
fuss if you say nothing.” 

Mrs. Grainger had once held a belief, which ex- 
perience had shaken, that any woman is able to con- 
trol her husband and to turn him out neat and tidy. 
To-day she was fain to admit that Loftus had got a 
little bit out of hand. He used some language which 
Mrs. Grainger was glad Ellie should not hear, and he 
seemed unable to know what to resent most, the fact 
that Miss Rivers had refused to play golf with his 
guest, or that her father was some unknown banker 
somewhere. At any rate, Miss Lascelles had been 
insulted, and Colonel Grainger meant to have some- 
one’s blood. 

During a pause in his rapid conversation his wife 
stopped short in the woodland path and, turning to 
face him, said, “I mean to find out all there is to 
know, Loftus.” 

The next morning the Colonel woke with the con- 
viction that there was something unpleasant to face. 

It was Sunday and wet. The golf course was a 
morass, and the woodland paths seemed made of 
greasy clay. 

Mrs. Grainger and Ellie put on waterproofs and 
went to church, in spite of the downpour, and the 
Colonel did a jigsaw puzzle at home. And all the 
time he was saying to himself, “Suppose she asks 


248 Snow upon the Desert 

for an explanation and wants to know what all this 
fuss is about, what am I to say?” 

He rose with a jerk, which scattered all his pieces 
upon the carpet, and, going to the door, he shouted 
to Herky to say that the weather had cleared, and 
to ask her to come for a walk. They set out together, 
and during the first mile or so Colonel Grainger was 
wondering how to begin his conversation. 

“Why do they avoid me?” asked Herky suddenly. 
‘ ‘ It was not my fault. Surely they must know it was 
not my fault.” 

“I know it was not,” he said; “you were only a 
little girl at the time, and whoever is to blame it is 
not you.” 

She astonished him by bursting into tears. 

“But it is dishonor, dishonor,” she said, “that I 
cannot bear.” 

“You mustn’t cry so, my dear,” he said, and put 
his arm about her. 

She turned her swimming eyes to his. “You do 
know,” she said, “that I would put things right if I 
could, but I cannot.” 

“You must let me help you,” he said. 

“No one can help,” she said. “I tried getting 
engaged to Mr. Belt, but you saw how hopeless that 
was, and now what am I to do ? ” 

“Let’s turn and go home now,” he said, “and 
then you shall go and lie down and the missus shall 
send you a cup of tea.” 


249 


Snow upon the Desert 

“Do you think everybody will treat me like this 
who knows about it?” she said. 

‘No, no, a thousand times no!” he answered, in- 
tent on comfort, while inwardly he was wondering 
what to say to his wife. 

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grainger had heard 
everything that very morning on her way home 
from church. It was all explained now, and what 
she insisted upon hearing was, how much Loftus 
had known when he introduced this girl into their 
midst. 

“Of course, I cannot let her go about with Ellie,” 
Mrs. Grainger said. 

“Oh, Ellie ’s character is safe enough,” her father 
said, “she won't do Ellie any harm.” 

“You never can tell what a corrupting influence 
girls may have upon each other,” his wife replied. 

Colonel Grainger played his last card. “Suppose 
she is a little bit under the weather,” he said, “you 
ought to help people who are down in their luck. 
It’s there in black and blue in the Bible that you 
ought.” 

“I must think it over,” said Mrs. Grainger, which 
meant that she must consult Ellie. 

But, having once relieved her burdened mind, she 
was able to see how wrong she had been in saying 
anything to one so young as Miss Grainger. The 
thing was done now, and the distressed mother found 
that she had eased her own feelings at the price of 


250 Snow upon the Desert 

her daughter’s approval. After a night’s reflection 
she decided that Miss Lascelles’ visit had better be 
brought to a close. 

“She has been already with us over two months,” 
said Mrs. Grainger, “and that is a handsome visit 
even if we had known her better.” 

“My dear Susan, the whole thing is nonsense, and 
how can a girl of eighteen go for a three days’ 
journey in a beastly uncomfortable tonga by her- 
self ? ’ ’ 

“The Aylmers are going to take care of her,” said 
Mrs. Grainger. 

“If she’s not good enough for Ellie I do not see 
why she is good enough for Mrs. Aylmer.” 

“Don’t be absurd, Loftus, and do try to he 
sensible, dear, and look facts in the face. We ask a 
girl to stay with us, to be a companion to our only 
daughter, knowing very little about her (at least, I 
knew very little), but you must see what the general 
opinion is about her here.” 

The difficulty was to convey to the girl, otherwise 
than clumsily, that her visit must he brought to an 
end. In England these things are very easily man- 
aged. It is not inhospitable to suggest to a guest that 
her next hostess may be expecting her, or, in extreme 
cases, to ask what her plans are, but in this case an 
escort for the lady had to be thought about, and, 
even were an escort provided, where was she to go? 
It was disconcerting to find that Miss Lascelles 


251 


Snow upon the Desert 

treated her dismissal with her usual patience and 
calm philosophy, which strove to find excuse even 
w T here understanding was difficult. 

‘ ‘ I have, ’ ’ she said, ‘ ‘ read much of this same thing 
in histories.” 

‘‘It depends what histories you have read,” said 
Mrs. Grainger sharply, her mind still concerned with 
Ellie. 

“It is vendetta,” her young guest replied, “but I 
did not know that these old customs still continued.” 

“I do feel sorry about it,” said Mrs. Grainger, 
softening, and speaking with more warmth than she 
had intended. 

“I am content,” said the young lady, with simple 
dignity, “to share the blame which has fallen upon 
us both.” 

“I really wish I could help you,” said Mrs. 
Grainger. 

“Oh, if only I had Mr. Belt’s money!” said Herky, 
with a sigh. 

The following day she got a telegram from Mrs. 
Antrobus asking her to come and pay them a visit 
in Calcutta. 

“Why couldn’t Loftus have told me he was tele- 
graphing to her?” said Mrs. Grainger; “I might 
have thought of someone much more suitable. Re- 
member,” she said to him, “I am not turning this 
unfortunate child out of doors, I am merely bringing 
her visit to an end.” 


Chapter XIII 


M RS. ANTROBUS returned to Calcutta early 
in October while the weather was still hot. 
Climate affected her very little. Her color had not 
suffered by the suns of India, and she walked 
always with a certain vigor which was characteristic 
of her. She thoroughly enjoyed the return to town 
life. There were streams of carriages on the Red 
Road, and many invitations to dinners and dances 
arrived in large envelopes and were stuck into the 
frame of her mirror. Polo matches and races had 
begun, and Pleasure, so often misrepresented as a 
winged being, ever escaping those who pursue her, 
allowed herself to be caught and held captive in 
Calcutta between the months of November and 
March. 

Mrs. Antrobus waxed eloquent on the difference be- 
tween rural and urban situations, as she sat in the 
garden of Government House one day and watched 
visitors and tennis-players on the well-kept lawns, 
and noted the pretty English dresses newly arrived 
in tin-lined cases from home. 

“Since we are civilized, we had better live under 
civilized conditions, ’ ’ she remarked. 

252 


258 


Snow upon the Desert 

“I believe women really love conventional sur- 
roundings,’ ’ the Viceroy said, “although we credit 
them with primitive instincts.” 

“Are we savages or not?” she responded; “I be- 
lieve we are simply uneducated.” 

“In spite of Cambridge Local Examinations?” 

“The highest form of education is responsi- 
bility ” 

“ — and women, if not actually trained to be ir- 
responsible, are generally encouraged to be so.” 

“It is attractive,” she said. 

“Women are such gamblers!” said the Viceroy; 
“they are always staking their best possessions — 
sometimes everything they have — on a throw ! Is the 
prize admiration or love or satisfied vanity, and is 
it worth while?” 

“We are often left bankrupt,” she said. 

He looked at her sharply for a moment, and said, 
“Is it always to be an impertinence to understand 
you, Bertha?” 

“Your Excellency, we were taking about rural 
districts. ’ ’ 

“We were,” he answered; “and I was trying to 
find out from you why it is that women, whom we 
credit with primitive instincts, should be the most 
civilized creatures on God’s earth.” 

“A return to primitive conditions always fills me 
with a sense of fatigue,” Mrs. Antrobus said. “I 


254 Snow upon the Desert 

don’t know anything I find more irksome than not 
dressing for dinner.” 

He looked at her gravely for a moment, and then 
said, “We believe in women’s inherent love of adorn- 
ing themselves, hut it belongs, does it not, to those 
who dwell among tribes?” 

“Oh, give me tribes!” she retorted gaily. 

“You are afraid of solitude, Bertha?” 

But she refused to be drawn into a serious dis- 
cussion. 

“Probably it is the want of humor in Nature which 
makes solitude irksome,” she said. “One can’t laugh 
at a hill or a landscape or a tree.” 

“The more I live in India,” the Viceroy said, “the 
more I am struck by the fact that there are many 
millions of people in the world who do not require 
to laugh.” 

The new Viceroy was either a cousin of Mrs. An- 
trobus, or he had cousins in common with her. It 
began to be said for the first time that the lady whom 
India had not received cordially was connected with 
persons of distinction at home. It was known that 
she dined quietly with the Viceregal party when they 
were alone, and this helped to mitigate the sentence 
passed on her own house that it was one in which 
“men were in and out all day long.” Once or twice 
distinguished guests, who possessed perhaps not an 
acre in the world, but wrote themselves down as a 
whole county, came on from Government House to 


255 


Snow upon the Desert 

stay with her, and could be seen driving beside her. 
There was something to be said for the modern point 
of view after all! Mrs. Antrobus was beautiful and 
amusing, and English visitors were at some pains to 
get invitations to her house. 

4 ‘The laughter I myself want,’’ she was saying, 
“is not provoked by the comic.” 

“Laughter is generally supposed to be derisive / 9 
he said, “but it seems to me that sympathy is its 
truer meaning.” 

“Oh, sympathy, no! Laughter would hurt much 
more if it were sympathetic. Let it be frankly 
amused by foibles, but don’t let it go deeper than 
that, sir.” 

“Remembering and bearing always in mind that 
we are civilized people who wear tall hats and stove- 
pipe clothing gravely.” 

“Let us talk,” she said, “about civilization and the 
symbolic silk hat, which I love.” 

“We will talk about anything that you wish.” 

“We may live in the country or in the provinces, 
or in the suburbs, and think we are at our best, but 
the symbol of civilization is only worn in London 
and Vienna, Paris and the places that really count. 
To live up to a silk hat is not for the clod.” 

“I believe you love the very feel of the pave- 
ments. ’ ’ 

“Ah! they are so safe,” she said, “and so secure! 


256 Snow upon the Desert 

I could even stand the tragedies of town, but not of 
the wilderness. ’ ’ 

“I have always thought,” he said, “that the life 
of capitals is designed for the energetic, or the witty ; 
for beauty, or for anything else which excels. The 
mediocre man is only an onlooker at it; the unfit 
perish sooner there than elsewhere.” 

“Your Excellency seems to think that the provin- 
cial had better remain in the provinces!” 

“Players can only do their best, for the most 
part,” he said, “when there is an audience in the 
stalls. It furnishes a stimulus which nothing else 
can give. But in India it is the men without an 
audience who often are doing the best work.” 

“I think they know you are aware of that, sir.” 

“There is room for both,” he said quickly. “The 
man without an audience may escape some of the fret 
of criticism ” 

“But his rewards are few! Men on outpost duty, 
for instance, seldom seem to me to be enviable, and 
I could dispense with the solitary grandeur of a 
position where a man only sees his fellow-kind once 
in a few months. ’ 7 

“Your world must he peopled?” 

1 1 It must be peopled even if they shout me down . 7 7 

“It is rather wearing, Bertha.” He looked keenly 
at her for a moment. “It demands a heavy toll.” 

“It is exhausting,” she said lightly. “But when 
we cease from the strenuous life and declare our- 


Snow upon the Desert 257 

selves ready for green lawns and shady trees and 
early hours and old clothes, it is an indication of 
fatigue or failure. I like trumpet calls !” 

“You will always respond to them,” he said, “even 
if it means fighting.” 

“What should I do if I were not fighting?” 

She exulted in the life of Calcutta. Even the shops 
were a joy to her. One could match a ribbon at 
Hall and Anderson’s, and could guess at English 
fashions from Whiteaway and Laidlaw’s windows. 
The names of the shops had a curious sound of slang 
about them, and Pelitis, where one could get a fair 
cup of tea, suggested comic opera. 

It was good to feel a pavement under one’s feet 
again, and inspiring to drive out to dinner night 
after night across the misty maidan. An evening 
edition of a newspaper recalled the delights of living 
in London, and to hail a passing cab was suggestive 
of the rights of citizenship. 

“There is a sense of satisfaction in being alive 
among the living,” Mrs. Antrobus said, “but of what 
use is the breath in one’s body far away from the 
haunts of men?” 

To Herky, who had but just arrived, she said: 
“You must come to the Army and Navy Stores the 
very first morning, and just sniff the odor of stores 
out from England — real English groceries, and figs 
and jam! Then we will go and buy all the latest 
English books. Oh, my dear, we are far away from 


258 Snow upon the Desert 

the whispering sounds of quiet nights and the hor- 
rible eternal hills ! The ships are lying in the river — 
British-India ships with white lines round their fun- 
nels, ready to start for Burmah, and down at the 
docks are the grand, big liners that sail for Ceylon 
and the Port of London. There is an echoing sta- 
tion, Herky, with trains thundering out of it to roll 
and sway across the plains to Bombay, and those who 
tell us they love the life of the jungle or the Hills 
and can find pleasure in solitude, let them come into 
the world of living men and women again.” 

“We will ride in the mornings,” she went on, “and 
spoil our complexions, and we will enjoy India as it 
ought to be enjoyed. We are going to pretend we 
are in England. Oh, my dear, I saw an English 
nurse to-day with some rosy children, and I spent an 
hour gossiping with a real English maid.” 

A December morning in Calcutta is as beautiful as 
a summer morning in England. The white mists 
which have brooded on the maidan all night begin 
to stir lazily in their sleep. The gray crows wake us 
before it is light, and we shiver a little and pull up 
an extra covering on our beds. All about us are the 
quiet gardens of the bungalows, only the crows have 
begun to chatter early. The mists are stealing up 
now from the grass, and from the dewy, tree-bordered 
streets. Everything is covered with dew — the dust 
is laid with it, the leaves drip with it, the gray crows 
dust it from their wings, and hop stiffly in the cold 


259 


Snow upon the Desert 

of the early morning. Some servants stir about the 
place, and a bheestie goes to the well for water. A 
shuffling ayah appears with morning tea, and when 
she throws open the shutters we see that the sun is up 
and making the dew glisten. 

There was a zest in the mere act of living, and 
Mrs. Antrobus responded to the stirring call of it. 

“Once,” she said to herself, “I was disapproved, 
now I seem to be in danger of becoming the fashion ; 
and my occupation would be gone were it not that I 
have a girl now to fight for.” 

“You have never told me yet,” her friend, the 
Viceroy, said to her once, “what the particular 
trouble is about your pretty friend.” 

“Your Excellency,” she said, “she entered India 
under my immediate patronage.” 

“A sorry condition,” he answered, smiling. “And 
for her ” 

“For her,” she said quickly, “it is worth while 
even being discreet. Oh, don’t mistake me! I am 
not one of those whom a little child shall lead ! Per- 
haps I am merely getting old.” 

“One hears that you rescued her from rather an 
awkward position.” 

“I have no powers of rescuing,” she answered 
sharply, “but, by adhering to a few conventions, I 
believed I might save her from the unpleasant task of 
declaring that nettles do not sting as one treads upon 
them . 9 9 


260 Snow upon the Desert 

* 1 Things have gone hardly with you, Bertha. ’ ’ 

“Oh, I am a hardened sinner,” she answered, 
laughing, “and nettles don’t hurt me, but a child 
starts with the idea that its path is to be strewn 
with roses. I think she is happy with me, but people 
are stupid. Lady Fanshawe, for instance, has not 
asked her to her dance. She tells me every time that 
I meet her that she is chaperoning two nieces this 
winter, and that she hopes I will remember how 
small her rooms are.” 

“What absurdity!” he said. “We must get up 
a little dance for Miss Lascelles. I will ask Her Ex- 
cellency if it can be arranged. Captain Bethel’s 
father was an old friend of mine. That other fellow 
was a bounder, wasn’t he?” 

“The gods are good,” Mrs. Antrobus said, when 
she found herself alone, “and at least Jack has not 
admired her. He has found her dull, while admitting 
that she is beautiful, and he gave her up when he 
found that her ingenuousness was not artificial, and 
that she went to church on Sundays. ’ ’ She felt grate- 
ful to Jack, who had not even wished to ride with 
his guest, or to help her into her saddle, arranging 
her habit and placing her foot affectionately in the 
stirrup, in the manner which always caused his wife 
a quick feeling of irritation. 

She went to the girl ’s room to call out her pleasant 
piece of news to her, “and we are going this very 
minute to order a new dress for the dance,” she said. 


Snow upon the Desert 261 

“The dance is in your honor, and the dress is to he 
the prettiest this country ever produced/ ’ 

1 1 But I am not received, am I ? ” said Herky. 

Mrs. Antrobus sat biting the top of her pen. Out- 
side there was a noise of marching feet, and an oc- 
casional bugle-call, a rattle of carriages driving over 
the bridges of the Fort, and the dancing sunshine was 
over everything. Mrs. Antrobus put down her pen 
and clasped her hands together on the blotting-book 
in front of her. There were candles with red shades 
on the writing-table, and she began to adjust their 
silk frills, and then to put straight a few silver trifles. 
In a mirror opposite her she could see Herky ’s re- 
flection as she stood in the middle of the room, draw- 
ing on a pair of long, gray gloves in her usual sedate 
and composed way. 

“Their Excellencies’ little dance in her honor will 
put it all right, of course. What an absurd little 
world it is!” 

But afterwards this matter of the dance became 
too urgent with her, and she spent much time devis- 
ing a dress for her friend that would surpass all 
others in the room. 

“No, it is not to be ‘something white,’ ” she said, 
when they had reached the house where the brave 
gown was to be bought; and nothing that was shown 
to her was declared to be the thing she wanted. All 
suggestions failed to satisfy her — “gray like a 
cloud?” — no, a cloud was not to be the symbol. 


262 Snow upon the Desert 

* ‘White chiffon with a string of pearls round the 
neck?” “Ah, no, that was too like the dress she had 
long ago devised for another girl! 

In the end she chose black, and herself lent a 
curious old belt to wear with the dress. The belt 
was a beautiful jeweled thing with a clasp made of a 
serpent’s head set in diamonds. 

‘ ‘Anyone else might have looked fantastic,” she 
thought, as she saw the young girl ready dressed for 
the ball, in the long black draperies which hung 
straight from her waist and yet were so light that 
a draught stirred them. “If I have made her look 
too pretty, shall I not have defeated my own end? 
Yet to-night must show where she stands, and I am 
nervous.” 

They entered the carriage and joined the stream 
of those who were going into the house, then pur- 
sued their way into the large gray marble rooms with 
their rose-colored furnishings and gleaming floors. 

“Good luck,” said Mrs. Antrobus, as she handed 
her an empty program with a gay cord and 
dangling pencil. 

People said that Mrs. Antrobus looked white to- 
night, because she was wearing a green gown which 
did not become her. 

“A dance,” she was saying to herself, “is some- 
times to a woman what a battle is to a man. Here 
she wins or loses, and here she shows her metal. No 
one helps her very much, but she smiles through it 


Snow upon the Desert 263 

all; which is good. And when she gets home she 
counts the wounds and the triumphs, and only she 
knows whether she has won or lost.” 

At the moment usually described as the dance 
being “at its height,” Mrs. Antrobus began to won- 
der if maidenhood in a black frock was to have all 
the attention she demanded for her or not. There 
was no actual lack of partners, hut Mrs. Antrobus 
was as nearly as possible fidgety to-night. 

“You must only dance with ‘the best people!’ ” 
she said, putting the absurd phrase into inverted 
commas, in order to make a half- joke of her direc- 
tions. 

“Shall I know them when I see them?” 

1 ‘ I shall stand near you. ’ ’ 

“And not dance?” 

“I do not want to dance to-night. Have you a 
partner for this waltz?” 

“No, I am afraid I have not.” 

“Then please stand near me and look as if you 
had ! Here is a General ; he will do for us both if I 
act the part of elderly chaperon and sit down.” 

“That will not he amusing for you.” 

“I can make it amusing. Women will sit beside 
me and feel quite fond of me ; and they will tell me 
where the best toilet soap can be got in London, and 
the only place to buy hats. And that will not 
only be informing but quenching; for a superior 


264 Snow upon the Desert 

knowledge of Bond Street marks the status of the 
woman.” 

“Sometimes when you begin to talk nonsense I 
know that you are worried / 1 

“How often have I told you not to be observant, 
Herky?” 

1 ‘ May I not sit beside you during this one dance ? ’ ’ 

1 1 General, I am tired, and Miss Lascelles is thirsty. 
Be kind to us both!i Let me rest, and take her to 
have a cup of tea.” 

“I think I never saw you look tired before,” the 
General said. “You must go home early.” 

“I shall stay to the very end!” she answered, 
laughing. 

She rose to speak to the Viceroy, who asked where 
Miss Lascelles was to be found. 

“I want her,” he said, “to give me a dance, to 
make up for all the duty ones which I have done.” 
He was a man singularly little conscious of his posi- 
tion or of his influence throughout India, and the 
fact that he was Viceroy of India had hardly im- 
pressed itself upon him as a personal fact. Most 
people sought his advice, and he could sympathize 
with a debutante who had lost a steamer-trunk con- 
taining her very best coming-out dresses, or with an 
admiral who had lost his ship. 

“I have a piece of good news for her.” 

‘ ‘ It does not come too soon. ’ ’ 


Snow upon the Desert 265 

“ There is a rumor that the Yiali Expedition will 
soon be back. ,, 

“Then it will be possible soon to send telegrams ?” 

“Undoubtedly.” 

“We must make no further mistakes, sir.” 

“I shall send for him myself as soon as it is 
possible to do so. Meanwhile, it would perhaps be 
as well to say nothing to Miss Lascelles until the 
news is confirmed. You will miss her, Bertha.” 

Mrs. Antrobus nodded her head. 

“Also you are tired to-night.” 

“It is the wrong shade of green in my dress.” 

“I must tell them to get your carriage as soon 
as the next dance is over.” 

It was misty as they drove homeward, and the 
air was cold and heavy with moisture. Mrs. An- 
trobus was silent during the drive, and wondered 
what Herky was thinking about. To herself she 
was saying, “Don’t let me make a tragedy about it! 
this dance has been simply rather a failure. It has 
had nothing even remotely romantic about it. I have 
taken a pretty girl to a dance, and she has not had 
quite all the attention I could have wished for her. 
What does it matter?” 

The flatness of the occasion which had meant so 
much to her oppressed her, and she was counting the 
sacrifices and the struggles that are made for the 
good opinion of others. What, after all, do they 
amount to? She and Herky had gone to the dance 


266 Snow upon the Desert 

with beating hearts — who else really cared what hap- 
pened at the dance? People had seen a pretty girl 
dressed in black, and after the Viceroy had danced 
with her, partners were numerous enough. She was 
reestablished, no doubt, but why this eternal strug- 
gle for the firm foothold in society and the effort to 
stand well among one’s fellow-men? Taken one by 
one, their names and their status duly given, how 
valueless seem their opinion and yet in the aggregate 
how powerful. In the aggregate, too, how easily 
swayed. Who could say who would be the 
fashion this year or next? Why, indeed, had she 
herself become the fashion of late? 

The pressure of social laws burdened her by its 
weight and irritated her by its triviality. Some 
women find refuge from it in the society of those 
who love and believe in them. For her flight would 
mean solitude, and she detested solitude. 

When she got home, she heard what the thoughts 
of the girl beside her had been and her reflections 
on the evening. 

“I am thinking about Justice,” she said in the 
quaint way she had of beginning a conversation, like 
some shy philosopher who propounds argument with 
diffidence. 

“It is a crude subject.” 

“Why is one person responsible for what another 
has done?” 

“I haven’t the least idea.” 


267 


Snow upon the Desert 

“I would atone for everything if I could.’ ’ 

1 ‘Go to bed now, and don’t think about it.” 

“I know it is very late,” she said in her docile 
way. 

“Oh, I didn’t mean to dismiss you!” cried Mrs. 
Antrobus. “I, you know, am never sleepy! Let us 
get our mail letters in from the hall and read them, 
and try and realize that there is a little place called 
England in the world.” 

“Ah, if only I had never seen it, or had left it 
sooner ! ’ ’ 

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, Herky.” 

“You mean that I should still have been blamed.” 

“I refuse to let you worry about anything at two 
o’clock in the morning!” 

“We will, if you please, look at the good side of 
it. Without my voyage with Digby I might not have 
learned that I love him.” 

“That is true.” 

“So at least among all my misfortunes I have 
nothing to regret about having run away from 
school. ’ ’ 

“Of course not.” 

“Still, one would like to have a good name.” 

“Herky, I am reading my mail letters and I refuse 
to listen.” 

“I will read mine.” 

There was silence for a time but for the sound of 
rustling paper and turned leaves, 


268 Snow upon the Desert 

“Deliverance seems to have come to me in a very 
unexpected way,” said Miss Lascelles at last. 

“You have news?” 

“I have heard from Mr. Belt.” 

“Don’t suggest anything ridiculous; I won’t hear 
of it!” 

“He says ‘he has made Barclay and Stevens 
boom.’ ” 

“That is much better.” 

“Does it mean that all the widows and orphans 
will be paid?” 

“Probably they have all made fortunes; widows 
and orphans always invest at a high rate of interest. ’ ’ 

“Then I suppose the vendetta is at an end.” 

“The vendetta?” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“I haven’t enjoyed it,” said Herky, and her lips 
quivered, “and lately I have been saying to myself, 
‘ Can even widows and orphans have suffered as much 
as I have done?” 

“You thought,” began Mrs. Antrobus — 

She was always impulsive, and now she rose and 
clasped her arms about the girl and kissed her, and 
murmured incomprehensible, fond things. “If I say 
a word perhaps I shall spoil it. Yes, yes, it was be- 
cause they were sorry about the widows and orphans 
that they were wicked to you, Herky, but people 
aren’t nearly as bad as they are painted, are they? 
They never had a hard thought of you, my dear, 
never !” 


269 


Snow upon the Desert 

“They thought hardly of my father.' ’ 

“That couldn’t harm him,” exclaimed Mrs. An- 
trobus triumphantly. ‘ ‘ Herky, I really believe I shall 
have to go to bed. You see you have given me a good 
deal to think about, and the only place of refuge for 
a person who says the wrong thing as often as I do 
is bed!” 

She turned back at the door. 

“You are quite sure that Mr. Belt imposes no 
conditions ? ’ ’ 

“He doesn’t say anything about them.” 

“You know he fled successfully from Madras, and 
I just thought ” 

“ — Oh, he never said a word about that.” 

“Noble Mr. Belt! He might have made that a 
condition, but perhaps reflection showed him that it 
was impossible, or it is just possible that he may have 
heard about the dear, sulky young man who entreats 
someone to put a bullet through his head. ’ ’ 

“Ah, you mustn’t laugh,” said Herky. 

As a matter of fact Mrs. Antrobus began to cry 
when she reached her room. She cried quietly and 
thankfully for some time and then told herself that 
her complexion would be ruined. Then she lifted 
her head and said cheerfully, “She will be very 
rich, and we shall be able to pay our debts. Or we 
might let the debts slide and go home for six months. 
After all, it was my own money that I put into Bar- 
clay and Stevens. We might go home and see prim- 


270 Snow upon the Desert 

rose woods and cherry blossom in the orchards, and 
such things restore one’s soul. Yes, I must go home. 
After all, we have always been notoriously bad pay- 
masters, and the debts may just as well go on to the 
end. 

“Herky will be married at once, of course; the 
young man will arrive by the Viceroy’s command in 
Calcutta, and there will be self-reproaches and ex- 
planations, and all the dear troubles that lovers act 
over again for the sake of finding them gone. Then 
will follow a wedding in the Cathedral, and a bride 
all in white, both rich and beautiful; and people 
won’t remember anything about the child who went 
about claiming dishonor, and suffering for a fault 
which, Heaven help us and her, no one ever laid at 
her door. 

“His Excellency will probably give her away and 
the curtain ought to ring down on a very happy 
ending. 

. . . “Then there will come a pause. I believe I 
shall not like the pause. The house will feel desolate 
for a time. One has grown accustomed to a good 
deal of love and thoughtfulness in these last pleasant 
months. Also I have had companionship; and I am 
not accustomed to it. I am sure to miss it a little 
at first. 

“I shall not like the pause,” she repeated, and 
her eyes looked into space for a time. “I wonder 
if bogies will come back again when she is gone, and, 


271 


Snow upon the Desert 

when I am alone, shall I hear India begin to speak to 
me again? I wonder if I shall begin to lie awake 
again in the hot nights when the wells creak in the 
darkness and the dead moon lights up all the land, 
and the jackals howl beside the door. No, no, I shall 
go away for a time. I shall go and stay with people. 
Not the Richardsons: the Richardsons are peaceful 
but they are too quiet! It will be best, after all, to 
go home to England. Mr. Belt’s success in making 
Barclay and Stevens boom has come at a most con- 
venient time, and, with what seemed like a bit of 
waste paper turned to respectable bank-notes, escape 
has become possible.” 


Chapter XIV 


M AJOR EDEN, according to an old promise, 
came to be best man at the wedding. He 
was staying at a friend’s house for the occasion, and 
Mrs. Antrobus did not see him until he appeared in 
church with the bridegroom. She thought first, and 
quite soberly, how good-looking he was, and then 
with a deliberately impersonal touch she told herself 
that both men had their share in attractive appear- 
ance, and that it was not unusual in English soldiers 
— nothing to make a fuss about, in fact, nor to stir 
the heart. She told herself prosaically that the wed- 
ding, like the Viceroy’s dance, was not charged with 
unsuspected things, but must be for her intentionally 
flat. She wished incidentally that the organ would 
cease playing, and hymns gave her always a sensation 
akin to aching, such as some people feel when dance 
music is being played. She blamed the hymns for a 
sob that rose in her throat. Hymns belonged to a 
world where people dwelt securely and thought se- 
renely, and slept peacefully under the shadow of a 
great rock. On pilgrim ways they might still be 
heard, but she felt like one that stands outside a 
church and listens to the singing within, and waits 
272 


Snow upon the Desert 273 

for the congregation, with their blessed, peaceful 
faces, to come out into the highways again. 

When the bride came up the aisle she still schooled 
herself to a deliberately unemotional mood and even 
said, * ‘ I have seen brides in white before. ’ ’ She went 
to the vestry to witness the signing of the register, 
and there she met Major Eden and shook hands with 
him. During the course of the afternoon they some- 
times found themselves near to one another and some- 
times far apart. For there were crowds of friends in 
the big drawing-room in the Fort, and besides her 
duty of hostess she had to play a mother *s part to her 
friend — had to see the pretty traveling dress put on 
in good time, and the luggage mysteriously carried 
downstairs. Sometimes during the afternoon she 
wondered why it was that a heart so effectively hard- 
ened as hers could give its owner so much pain. 

As a hostess she was always successful. Even 
those who criticized her came under the spell of her 
very charming gift of courtesy. Her wit, perhaps, 
was less appreciated. Nevertheless, it pleased her 
to be her most brilliant this afternoon. Her sallies 
were repeated from mouth to mouth, and her jests 
were made with an irresponsibleness that gave them 
a touch of na/ivete. Always it seemed as if Mrs. 
Antrobus merely transmitted them from someone 
unseen to the rest of the world, and that she herself 
had nothing to do with them. Probably she forgot 
everything she said as soon as it was uttered — she 


274 Snow upon the Desert 

was not one who saved her jests in order to utter 
them again. 

It was difficult to penetrate the crowd which sur- 
rounded her always and during the whole afternoon. 
Many people picked up their hats and cloaks and 
were obliged to leave without getting near her to 
hid her good-bye. 

While she successfully played the part of hostess 
she was saying to herself 4 ‘Now he has gone into the 
dining room, now he is at the window, now he has 
taken someone down to her carriage. ” She was never 
for an instant unconscious of his presence. Once, 
when the unconsidered movements of the crowd had 
thrown them close together, she heard someone in her 
vicinity say that Jack Antrobus had sneaked off for 
a drive with a pretty woman, and another voice said 
in response, “A good thing, too ; Jack is always at 
his worst at a wedding.’’ 

She knew then just where to look for help, and 
found it in the presence of the man who was close 
by her side. Instinctively she drew nearer to him 
and their eyes met for a moment. 

“Ah! my dear,” he said. 

It was imperative that the work of schooling and 
hardening should go on. Bertha moved among her 
guests again, and she and Major Eden were not again 
near each other till the rooms were nearly empty. 

“You will miss her,” he said. 

She nodded. “But the world has received me 


Snow upon the Desert 275 

back into favor again. I am never going to be 
alone. ’ ’ 

“We are both of ns always alone/ ’ he answered. 

She winced at that, and then said doggedly, almost 
with a show of dour temper in her voice, “I shall 
never come to you.” 

“I am going back to-night, I only came for the 
wedding,’’ he said. “I hope my being here has not 
distressed you.” 

She went on as though she had not heard him. ‘ ‘ It 
would be folly, wouldn’t it, now that all men speak 
well of me, to do anything foolish?” 

“Do you owe anything to the world who con- 
demned you without a hearing, and who, if ever it 
had doubts, did not give you the benefit of them?” 

“The world and I have shaken hands and are 
going to forget old scores. ’ ’ 

“I hate it,” he said. 

“I am very dependent upon it,” she answered. 

“Is that because you are still frightened? Do you 
ever feel frightened now, Bertha?” 

“I wanted to go home,” she said. 

“It would do you good to go home now that Herky 
is married. Are you not going ? ’ ’ 

“Oh, it is the usual question of the Budget!” she 
responded lightly. “Anyone so extravagant as I am 
never has money to spend on a trip home.” 

He was a man of good means, and he hated his 
money then because he could not offer it to her. 


276 Snow upon the Desert 

‘ ‘ 1 have nothing left but your old promise to me, ’ ’ 
he said; and she repeated doggedly, “I shall not 
come. ’ ’ 

Some guests came presently to say good-bye, and 
he with them. She shook hands and heard every 
footfall of his as he went downstairs, distinct and 
separate from all the other footfalls. 

She bade farewell to the last of her friends and 
went back to the drawing-room. She arranged her 
room as a woman does after guests have gone — re- 
storing a chair to its place or straightening cushions 
and draperies. She thought how bare a room looks 
when it is suddenly emptied of a throng, and she 
decided to have more furniture for the drawing-room. 
She was dining alone this evening, and had told her- 
self that the rest would not be unwelcome after the 
fatigues of the day. 

‘‘Now comes the pause,” she said. 

She took off her wedding finery and dressed early 
for dinner in a comfortable black dress made of some 
soft material, in which she promised herself the un- 
wonted luxury of lying down on the drawing-room 
sofa. The pause was to be accepted philosophically 
and with some degree of physical comfort. She lay 
with her eyes shut, telling herself half-humorously 
that she was accepting the conventional treatment for 
relaxed nerves and muscles after a strenuous day. 
But a restlessness possessed her after she had lain 
still for some time, and she rose and went to the 


277 


Snow upon the Desert 

piano. She found solemn chords would have been 
an impossibility, and gay music, she said impatiently, 
would have been like the sound of a brass band in a 
tomb, and she closed the piano again. 

“I am absurdly tired/ ’ she said, in excuse for her 
own restlessness. 

The room looked very large and empty, and as the 
light waned some shadows crept oddly across it. She 
left the piano and went and looked at herself in a 
mirror as a woman often does when she is solitary. 
Perhaps she finds some companionship in the eyes 
that meet hers, or it may be that the reflection of her 
own face in the glass has something consoling in it. 

i ‘We have traveled a good long way together/ ’ 
said Mrs. Antrobus, nodding at the image she saw, 
“and we know each other pretty well, you and I.” 

She propped her chin on her hand, and said con- 
fidentially, “We ought to have gone home; it was 
absurd for me to get out of debt. It is still more 
absurd to attempt the heroic standpoint. It would 
have been far safer to have gone home. ’ ’ 

There was a suffocating feeling of solitude in the 
room, and Mrs. Antrobus turned on some more elec- 
tric light. 

In the mirror she saw more plainly reflected now 
the image of the woman in black with the well- 
shaped, beautiful face and the white arms, as she 
leaned upon the table. 


278 Snow upon the Desert 

“I wonder how a man feels when he is left on an 
island in mid-ocean and sees his friends sail away ? ’ ’ 

She crossed the room hastily and pressed the bell, 
which gave forth a long fluttering sound in the still 
house. 

‘‘I will ask Jack to give up his dinner at the Club 
and stay at home and dine with me.” 

She heard he had not come in yet, and she went 
back to her place and listened for every footfall on 
the stone staircase. 

“The mists will he thick to-night,’ ’ she thought, 
“and that will add to the stillness of the house.” 

When the other residents in the Fort had departed 
to dine out, or had settled down to dinner at home, 
the silence of the house seemed to increase. She heard 
the hum of the city and the distant sound of a fog- 
horn on the river, and said to herself that it was 
ridiculous to feel any sense of solitude here. 

“I will ask Jack to let me have an English maid. 
Some white woman in the house would be a comfort 
to me. What shall I do if I begin to be afraid again 
and there is no one with me?” 

She thought of the winter that was past when a 
girl’s presence had seemed to fill the house, and of 
the evenings when if by chance she had gone out 
alone, Herky, who was a light sleeper, had always 
come to her room to hear news or to get an account 
of some party told in Mrs. Antrobus’s inimitable 
way. How they had laughed together! wasting the 


Snow upon the Desert 279 

hours of precious sleep in much contentment to them- 
selves. How much more joy they had often got from 
a drive home from some social gathering than from 
the gathering itself. 

She said to herself that Herky was a dispeller of 
ghosts. There had been something very sane and 
very sweet about the companionship of this girl. 

Notes that were written in a girlish hand had had 
a certain charm about them, and the questions from 
the second writing table — “Do I say ‘Dear Sir or 
Dear Mr.?’ or ‘What do I put on an envelope when 
the initials after a man’s name take up a whole line 
to themselves?’ ” had interrupted her less than the 
chirping of birds in a garden. 

She went to the window and saw her husband drive 
up to the door, and wondered what Lady Fanshaw’s 
pretty maid would say to her mistress in excuse for 
not being hack in time to dress her for dinner. She 
heard his step on the stone hall and went out to 
meet him. 

“Come in for a minute or two before you go to 
dress,” she said. 

He took out his watch and glanced at it, “I am 
late enough as it is,” he said. “What is it?” 

She did not know what to say to him. 

“Well, what is it?” 

“I am in the blues, Jack.” 

“You are always in one thing or another,” he re- 
plied genially. 


280 Snow upon the Desert 

“Where are you dining to-night?” 

“We have no one coming here, have we? I am 
going round to the Club.” 

‘ ‘ Give it up and dine with me!” 

“I suppose you are going somewhere,” he said, 
evading a more direct reply. 

“No, I am going nowhere. When Herky was here 
she and I used to venture on the wild experiment of 
a few quiet evenings together. Try the experiment 
with me this evening.” 

“You should have asked me sooner,” he said. He 
hated having his plans disturbed. 

“But then,” she answered, smiling, “I did not 
know I was going to have the blues. ’ ’ 

“Well, my advice is, have a pint of champagne for 
dinner. ’ ’ 

“Jack, stay with me!” 

“My dear girl, I can’t go chucking my plans about 
at the last moment like this! If you wanted me to 
dine with you — and Heaven knows why you have 
suddenly taken the idea into your head — you should 
have spoken earlier. ’ ’ 

A woman in fear has not much pride. 

“I haven’t asked you for anything for a long time, 
Jack.” 

“Well,” he said, “next time ask me for something 
more reasonable and not at the eleventh hour like 
this.” 

“I am frightened,” she said, 


281 


Snow upon the Desert 

“My good child,” Jack replied, “this is perfectly 
ridiculous. You used to have these crazy ideas about 
India and all that, but surely you have got over them 
now.” 

“I believe you think I am afraid of sedition, Jack, 
or of my own faithful servants.” 

“You are plucky enough when it suits you,” he 
said grimly. “What's wrong with this country, I’d 
like to know?” 

“It knows so much and tells us so little,” she said. 
“Sometimes I think that only here do we know what 
fate means and the innermost heart of things. The 
cross-legged Buddhas with their sightless eyeballs see 
things which we never see and hear things which we 
cannot hear.” 

“Good Lord, Bertha, you give one the jumps!” 

‘ ‘ In the daytime everything is British and safe and 
wholesome, but sometimes at night India begins to 
speak and tell its secrets — the secrets of its greatness 
and its sadness, and why life is held so cheap here, 
and the meaning of fate at which we cannot 
guess ” 

‘ 4 1 wish you would stop ! ” he said violently, “it is 
enough to give a fellow the horrors to hear you talk. 
Ring up some of your pals and ask them to dine with 
you. I am off now. And, look here, don’t give way 
to ridiculous fancies. You have a ripping good time 
out here, and goodness knows I don’t interfere with 
you.” 


282 Snow upon the Desert 

Once he shouted from his dressing room: “Are 
you there, Bertha? Ring up the Aylmers and ask 
them to come along.” 

She went to the telephone and did as he bade her, 
but the Aylmers were engaged and she hung up the 
telephone receiver, and decided not to call up anyone 
else. 

She dined alone and smoked cigarettes in the bal- 
cony of her house. The evening was very hot, and it 
was cool and dark out here; the lights from the 
drawing-room window shone pleasantly within and 
threw a patch of color on the rugs and tables placed 
on the now cooling stones. 

Mrs. Antrobus felt better since she had eaten, and 
she had half a mind to go inside and read English 
magazines and novels until it was time to go to bed. 
But the heat and a feeling of fatigue overcame her. 
She threw away the remains of her last cigarette, and 
lay back in her chair with her hands folded in front 
of her. 

Travelers, even the most intrepid of them, tell us 
that, having journeyed far into unknown solitudes 
without fear, there will come one night, unexpected 
by them, which neither valor nor common sense seems 
able to meet with fortitude — the night when some 
nameless terror takes hold of them and they are 
unable to meet it or to look it in the face. 

That is the night when it is difficult to go on. The 
explorer looking up at the snows says, “I will get 


Snow upon the Desert 283 

over them and I will climb laboriously peak by peak 
till the point which I have set myself to reach is 
won,” and his heart does not fail as he sets forth. 
Or he will look down the gaping ravine and wonder 
where it ends, but even if he thinks of turning back 
the feeling of cowardice is overcome, and the traveler 
takes heart again and journeys on into the unknown. 
The wide places of the desert which make his eyes 
ache with looking into the immeasurable distance of 
them hardly daunt him. The sea itself does not make 
him afraid. 

But the night of terror which is nameless and has 
no origin in impending danger or in difficulty no 
man can withstand. 

Sailors feel it sometimes at sea. Fishermen have 
experienced it in the North Sea when it has come to 
the turn of the man at the wheel to take his watch 
on deck; and he has come below again and again on 
some pretext in order to delay his going. Women 
get it sometimes and creep along the passage to the 
kitchen door and crouch there to hear the servants’ 
voices. 

Mrs. Antrobus had it to-night. She waited for her 
husband’s return with a feeling that amounted to 
longing. 

“Even Jack,” she said to herself, “even Jack.” 

Common-sense people, who are able to explain away 
everything by tracing all mental disturbance to phys- 
ical ill, will find a very good reason for these queer 


284 Snow upon the Desert 

fits of loneliness and of fear which almost everyone 
has experienced. Mrs. Antrobus was overwrought by 
the fatigues of the last few weeks. No doubt she 
was highly strung. No doubt, again, she missed the 
society of the young girl who had played the part 
of guest very engagingly during the past months. 
But, as common-sense people would have told her, 
that was no excuse for giving way to fears and fan- 
cies. She should have taken a hook, or set herself 
to do some useful work, instead of waiting with ears 
too sharply listening and with hands apprehensively 
locked. 

In time she rallied herself without the stimulus of 
a suggestion from outside, and began to push out 
disturbing thoughts by others to which she had grown 
accustomed, while admitting that they were not 
wholly attractive. 

“I will think of the future/ ’ she said, ‘‘and of 
what we shall do when we go home. Every year there 
are boatloads of us going home — the retired colonel 
and his wife — to take up our lives again in England. 
The colonel has lost his occupation, and his wife has 
lost her complexion. They generally settle at the 
seaside and talk of departed splendor. A chance 
word of Hindustani is music to them; they tell old 
Indian stories and “keep up” with a few old Indian 
friends. 

“Jack and I will live on our pension, and since 
Mr. Belt has been kind enough to ‘boom’ Barclay 


285 


Snow upon the Desert 

and Stevens we shall not even have debts to worry 
us. We shall be able to afford a retired colonel’s 
safe phaeton on four wheels and a single horse, and 
we shall drive into some local town on a good many 
afternoons in the week and do some shopping. We 
may even have a garden and take an interest in get- 
ting our bulbs cheap from Holland. Perhaps some 
old loyal friends may be found to say that one used 
to ride well or that one was good-looking. Neither 
statement will be very interesting even when it is 
believed! We ask too much when we ask people to 
care whether the woman with the faded complexion 
was once a ‘station’ beauty, or that the colonel with 
a bullet in his knee, perhaps, once fought a desperate 
engagement. 

“Jack and I will be just as boring as the others! 
We shall go back with the traditions of the England 
that is already out of date, and we shall try to over- 
take our ignorance of present-day affairs by going 
for a fortnight once a year to London. 

‘ ‘ Thus ends the storm of life in peaceful old age ! ’ ’ 

She rose and stretched herself, because the very 
thought of so placid a life had something sleepy in it. 

“I want to be at peace,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 

“Do you know what it means?” 

Mrs. Antrobus resented the question. “When one 
does not entertain guests,” she said, “it seems one 
entertains ghosts, and ghosts are horrible company.” 

Yet from the very fact of naming them the un- 


286 Snow upon the Desert 

invited guests drew near. She shivered a little in 
spite of the heat, but did not trouble to put a cloak 
about her. 

“Are you called ‘Some Day’?” she asked of one 
of the phantoms, and when there was no answer she 
said defiantly, “The only way to treat a bogey is to 
face it ; it soon flies ! ’ ’ 

She laughed aloud, and said, “It was my own 
fault ! I had no business to conjure it up, this ghost 
with the dull, plain face.” She dismissed it curtly, 
and drew on memory for a thing of happier spirit. 

“I am the ghost, ” the newcomer said, “of all that 
you have missed.” 

“But that is absurd,” said Bertha; “it is only 
people who come to die that make the past walk in 
review before them. I will neither look nor listen.” 

The phantom, without replying, began to add up 
a long score with its icy fingers. 

Naturally, the first word on the list was love. It 
is the word with which most women head the page 
of their histories, even if they sometimes blot it out 
afterward with their tears. 

“Have I missed love?” asked Mrs. Antrobus with 
her usual frankness and courage. She had not meant 
to add up with this pale ghost the tale of her failures. 
She resented his company and the mean advantage 
he had taken of her quiet evening at home. “Have 
I missed love ? ’ ’ she asked again. 

“All the love which you have inspired must go 


Snow upon the Desert 287 

with your youth and beauty, ’ ’ the odious ghost went 
on. 

“But I have had a child !” Mrs. Antrobus cried, 
“and at least Jack does not hate me. Ah!” she 
went on protestingly, stretching out her arms, “long 
ago I even tried in a pathetic, immature, girlish way 
to save — to do him good — how does one say it with- 
out encroaching on pious people’s phrases? I did 
try long ago.” 

She stopped and said to the ghost, “That seems to 
you hard to believe? 

4 1 1 thought we might give up racing and going into 
debt; it was quite useless, and my efforts, now that 
I think about them, were frequently tactless and 
oftener still rather tiresome. But I went on making 
them until my little girl died, and then I honestly 
could not see the use of trying. Her death was what 
is called 1 a great blow ’ to me. I do not know s. more 
adequate term. Jack tried to be kind. He patted 
me on the shoulder and said, ‘Better luck next time, 
old girl ! ’ It is what he used to say to me when I had 
lost half a crown at a race meeting. I went alone 
to my bedroom that afternoon, and unpicked the trim- 
mings of the cot and smoothed out the ribbons and 
lace, and I laid them away with the baby’s clothes. 
And I did that quite alone.” 

“But since then you and I have laughed,” said 
the ghost. 

“Oh, yes, we have laughed,” said Mrs. Antrobus. 


288 Snow upon the Desert 

“We have conquered our little world and even its 
prejudices, and we have laughed at them too. We 
have even mocked at their little platitudes and their 
safe little lives — which was wrong, no doubt, but it 
had its amusing side, too!” 

The ghost pointed at the lock of white hair on Mrs. 
Antrobus’s forehead. 

“Yes,” she cried, undaunted still as she always 
was, and pacing the balcony of the house impatiently. 
“Yes, the mark is still there, but no one can say I 
have hidden it or tried in any way to disguise it! 
I suppose even Cain might be forgiven if we knew 
that he had held up his head with the brand upon it. ’ ’ 

“They hardly scrupled once to charge you with a 
fault like his.” 

“Oh, hut they have mitigated the life-sentence,” 
said Mrs. Antrobus lightly. 

“They never forget.” 

She shrugged her shoulders. “What does it mat- 
ter?” she said. 

“Nothing matters,” said the ghost. “The world 
is very old and the stars are very numerous in 
the heavens. Who are you and I that we should 
fret?” 

“I hate the stars,” she said petulantly. “I don’t 
want to know how many million miles they are from 
us, nor how long their light took to reach us. I dis- 
like these immense figures, which mean nothing to 


Snow upon the Desert 289 

me, and I do not want to hear that the world in 
which I live is of so little consequence that it would 
hardly be missed from the solar system. ” 

‘ ‘ Even the moon is dead, ’ ’ said the ghost, pointing 
with its finger beyond the walls of the Fort to where 
in a misty heaven the moon shone faintly. 

“It has been dead for thousands of years,” she 
thought, “and now it is lighting up dead cities with 
its cold, uncaring light. If a thing so long dead can 
see it is watching the old empty gardens where once 
beautiful women lived, it sees the pleasure palaces 
and the soft cool waters. In the old banqueting halls 
the jackals now pad with their soft, stealthy foot- 
steps, or a lion may stalk through the great silent 
place. And in the mosques where they of an old 
faith worshiped, and from the places of prayer where 
they sent up cries to God, only the weird cries of 
night animals will be heard.” 

She felt the old fear gripping her and cried out 
against it as though it were some living thing. “It 
isn’t fair to come to me while I am alone like this! 
I have no defense; spare me a little.” 

All her courage was going now. The plain safety 
of the strong Fort where she lived melted away; its 
walls melted ; she saw nothing now but India as the 
dead moon sees it, and heard nothing but the silence 
speaking to her. The gods in the temples stared at 
her with unseeing eyes, and the old cities stretched 
out dead hands to heaven. The cruelties and the 


290 


Snow upon the Desert 

wrongs of millions of women who had lived and died 
here; the pleasures of great conquerors of old; the 
wealth of this vast place, its mines and its treasures 
were all speaking now, but louder still a voice spoke 
whose meaning she could never catch, and she cried 
out against it and said, “We are too near the unseen 
and the unknown; too near the mere tragedy of liv- 
ing. Speak out if there is anything to know, and 
do not whisper. Are you the secret of the world, 
and, the secret once guessed, where shall we be? I 
am fearful of what you have to tell me, but at least 
speak plainly or be silent.’ ’ 

Mrs. Antrobus sank a little lower in her chair and 
was glad to feel that it was there ; she sank down into 
it with the same desire to hide that a child has when 
it puts its head under the clothes of its bed. Once 
she thought she would call for help ; or again that she 
would speed across the barrack roads and find, per- 
haps, some officer’s wife sitting by a lamp with her 
sewing or her book. 

But the officer’s wife would not understand. 

Or she might go within the house and shiver 
there. In the small hours of the morning she 
would hear Jack’s step on the stair with its shuf- 
fling tread, and if she spoke to him he might not 
listen. 

Or she might wait here till the dawn came in like 
some sad, soft-footed beast with wondering, unintel- 


291 


Snow upon the Desert 

ligent eyes. “But, no!” she cried, “I cannot see the 
dawn coming!” 

She clung to her chair and great beads of perspira- 
tion broke out on her forehead. 

4 ‘ They tell me that it is India that I am afraid of, 
but it is something more than India ! ’ ’ 

She wondered, in her confusion of thought that 
rendered consecutive reasoning impossible, whether 
religion had ever more than touched the edge of mys- 
tery ; or whether it was because the answer to it was 
abroad in the air, apprehended but not made mani- 
fest, that it was so poignant. 

“Can the fasting saint,” she wondered, “tell us 
aught of life or death, or why we come or why we 
go? 

‘ 1 Can Nature, with its many problems, make things 
plainer? . . . Even the rivers never tell tales here 
— the yellow quiet rivers that never babble as little 
streams do. The hills which stand aloof all day, do 
they come near to each other and speak when the 
darkness has covered them ? Who are they who know 
and where are they? Have dumb creatures any 
affinity with the unknown, and do the animals, which 
they tell us see ghosts, see also much that is not visible 
to us? 

“Do the dead know? And is that why men and 
women are afraid to die ? Always the eternal struggle 
goes on for life — only for life ! No one seems to be 


292 Snow upon the Desert 

afraid of it except me. There are some who can even 
bear it alone. 

“But I cannot !” she cried out. “The world is 
too dark and crowded with things which I cannot 
see. Life is too terrible ! I cannot face it alone. * ’ 


Chapter XV 


T HERE were three women traveling together in a 
railway carriage. The first was Mrs. Mackenzie 
on her way to rejoin her husband in Madras, the sec- 
ond was a bride going there to be married, and the 
third was Mrs. Antrobus, who lay in the upper bunk 
and did not speak much to the other two. The ther- 
mometer stood high inside the carriage, for the hot 
weather had come early. 

“Ah, now I shall see India,” said the bride. She 
had a sketch book with her, and a great many travel- 
ing requisites, and she talked about the Orient. 

Mrs. Mackenzie laughed, not ill-naturedly, and the 
bride began to write her diary. She was telling her 
relations at home the difference between East and 
West, and the diary was to he sent hack to England 
in the form of a family letter. When she had fin- 
ished writing she studied Hindustani from a little 
phrase hook, and during the first part of the journey 
she pretended, out of loyalty to her absent subaltern, 
that she was not too hot. 

Mrs. Mackenzie slept when she could, hut Mrs. 
Antrobus, in the upper bunk, lay full length on the 
hard couch and stared at the electric fan in the 


293 


294 Snow upon the Desert 

ceiling, which was churning up the dust and calling 
itself ventilation. 

‘‘It will get cooler soon,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. 
She made the remark for the benefit of Mrs. Antro- 
bus, whom she neither liked nor approved, but who 
she thought had looked ill when she came on board 
the train. 

“Are you traveling without servants?” she asked. 

“Yes, I am quite alone.” 

“You would do better to get up for a little while,” 
said the sturdy lady. “I will get my bearer to come 
along at the next station and hook up your bunk. 
Try and read for a time; it will make the journey 
seem less long.” 

“Thank you, but I am very tired. I think I shall 
not get up.” 

The heat increased as the day wore on, and when 
the train next stopped Mrs. Mackenzie made her 
bearer draw up the shutters of the windows and the 
three women traveled on together in the twilight of 
the dusty railway carriage. A smell of new leather 
permeated it; its windows were of black glass. 

“So you are going out to be married?” said Mrs. 
Mackenzie to the bride. It was too dark even to knit, 
and she liked to employ herself getting full particu- 
lars of everyone, even of a chance acquaintance with 
whom she would voyage in the heat for a day or two. 

The bride was voluble about her own concerns. 
“If he could have come to meet me, he would cer- 


295 


Snow upon the Desert 

tainly have done so,” she said. “But it was impos- 
sible for him to get leave. You know what soldiers 
are.” 

She was a parson’s daughter, and had devoured 
the Army wholesale and with avidity since her en- 
gagement. She was a nice girl, not over-educated, 
and she always spoke of the absent subaltern as ‘ ‘ My 
f eeoncy . ’ ’ 

“The Brigade-Major and his wife are going to put 
me up till the twentieth. That’s our wedding day.” 

“Well,” said Mrs. Mackenzie comfortably, “I hope 
you will be very happy.” 

“We mean to be,” said the bride. She added, 
“Thank you,” as though to say, “Thank you all the 
same.” 

“You will like the life if you keep your health and 
can get away to the Hills in hot weather,” said Mrs. 
Mackenzie, who had enjoyed every hour of her stay 
in India. “Most women like India.” 

“But they like it in the wrong way,” said the 
sententious bride. ‘ ‘ They like flirting and — well, you 
know how things are described in nearly all the 
Indian novels that one reads. We don’t mean to be 
a bit like that.” 

“We’re not so bad as we’re painted,” said Mrs. 
Mackenzie in her fat, comfortable way; “especially 
now that we get home oftener.” 

“It is rather a mistake to go home,” said Mrs. 
Antrobus, joining in the conversation for the first 


296 


Snow upon the Desert 

time that day, and then seeming to abandon it from 
sheer weariness or because it was so hot. 

From the tone of her voice the bride made up her 
mind that she did not quite like the lady who rested 
all day and said so little. 

“We mean to go home every five years,” she said 
in a snubbing, conclusive manner. She began to ab- 
sorb herself in her book, after blowing off its cover 
the dust which had collected upon it. 

Mrs. Mackenzie traveled in comfort, and her ar- 
rangements for the journey betrayed her long experi- 
ence. She had an icebox with her containing soda- 
water; her dress was of gray alpaca, and her topee 
in a linen bag was suspended from a hook over her 
head. She bade her bearer fetch more ice, and settled 
herself with some holland-covered cushions behind 
her back to enjoy sleep. 

The bride moved to the window, and stood by it 
as the train entered a station. She took out her 
sketch book and with a few rapid strokes of her pencil 
she tried to produce some likeness of the thin brown 
limbs and elusive clothing of a native fruit seller. 
When the train had moved on again she showed the 
sketch to Mrs. Mackenzie and said in a simple, con- 
ceited way, “I think I have got the spirit of the 
thing, and I can work it up when I have time. I do 
love the natives,” she said. 

“You’ll find they break your things.” 

But the bride was following some line of thought 


297 


Snow upon the Desert 

of her own closely connected with mission services 
at home. “What does it matter what color a man 
is,” she said, with unnecessary courage; “it is only 
skin deep.” 

Mrs. Mackenzie, in a judicial Scottish way, said 
she thought it was more than skin deep, and the 
bride said, almost with a show of temper, and with 
the mission services still in her mind, “Well, they 
didn’t make themselves.” 

The train slowed down again. 

“At the next station,” the bearer said, “the mem- 
sahibs must get into the dining car.” 

“I shall not dine,” said Mrs. Antrobus. “May I 
have a little more soda water?” 

They tried to open the bottle by pressing the glass 
ball in the neck of it with their thumbs, but they 
failed to move it, and Mrs. Mackenzie, hot with exer- 
tion, said, “I hate a railway journey without Rob- 
ert.” 

“I don’t feel as if I could eat any dinner either,” 
said the bride. “It’s much too hot.” 

“Come, come,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, “that is not 
the way to begin. Tidy yourself up and smooth your 
hair and come away with me. You will be the better 
for something to eat even if you don’t feel inclined 
for it.” 

They went out into the blistering heat of the plat- 
form in their topees, and walked quickly along to the 


298 Snow upon the Desert 

dining car, which rocked and swayed and smelt of 
hot roast meat and humanity. 

Mrs. Mackenzie showed off her knowledge of Hin- 
dustani as she loved to do, and gave directions 
fluently to the waiter. “You will soon pick it up,” 
she said encouragingly to the bride, who admired her 
glibness. 

“I don’t think I much like our traveling compan- 
ion, ’ ’ said the young lady confidentially. 

“Oh, we have all got to get accustomed to Mrs. 
Antrobus!” replied Mrs. Mackenzie. 

“I don’t care for her face,” said the bride con- 
clusively. 

They went back to their compartment and found 
that Abdul had opened the soda water. It slopped 
about in the long glass which Mrs. Antrobus held 
in her hand, when the shaking of the train began 
again. There was ice in the glass which sparkled 
like silver, and in the swaying carriage the liquid 
permitted itself to be captured in occasional sips. 
Some of it which the bearer had spilt rolled about 
the floor in big dust-covered drops. 

“I believe we had better turn in soon,” said Mrs. 
Mackenzie when the light began to fade. “We shall 
feel it cooler when we have our things off.” 

“Oh, it’s hot, hot, hot!” said the bride, holding 
up her hands to cool them. 

Beds were made up for the night, and the three 
travelers put on night attire and plaited their hair. 


Snow upon the Desert 299 

“I hope you don’t mind the top bunk,” said the 
bride clumsily to the woman who lay there. “My 
feeoncy arranged with Cook and Sons that I was to 
have the lower one.” 

“I don’t mind in the least, thank you,” said Mrs. 
Antrobus from her uneasy shelf. 

The train rolled on through the dust and the dark- 
ness. It shook the women and made their heads nod 
ridiculously ; it tired their nerves, and the bride, feel- 
ing her back aching, arranged anew her pretty wed- 
ding-present cushions. 

“I suppose this is a broad-gauge line?” she said, 
with her loyal interest in all things belonging to the 
land of her adoption. 

“I suppose it is,” said Mrs. Antrobus indiffer- 
ently. She also held her hands above her head and 
spread out her fingers to cool them. All three women 
had tied up their heads in handkerchiefs to keep their 
hair from the encroaching dust. In the dim twilight 
and with their clinging cotton robes about them, they 
looked not unlike corpses stretched upon shelves. 

The train rolled on to the maddening reiteration 
of some absurd tune. A tune with no punctuation 
in it, but just a rollicking repetition of an insane 
rhythm. 

The dust settled down on the sleeping women; on 
their books and traveling bags and on their clothing, 
hanging on the pegs of the railway carriage. They 
breathed dust ; dreamed of it ; filled their lungs with 


300 


Snow upon the Desert 

it. The world was dust and they were buried in it. 
All three travelers wore bracelets of no value, with 
little ornaments, pencil cases or charms attached, and 
these jingled as they flung out their arms to catch 
the hot draught through the carriage. 

When the train stopped at a station the cries and 
shouts of natives awoke them one by one, and each 
of them raised herself upon her elbow and peered 
through the shutters at the yelling dark crowd ; then 
lay down again in the dusty gloom. Mrs. Mackenzie 
slept heavily at intervals. The bride wept a little, 
and Mrs. Antrobus lay still and straight, close up 
against the ceiling, and looked at it with wide-open 
eyes. 

At five o’clock the hearer let down one of the shut- 
ters and handed in three cups of tea. Mrs. Mac- 
kenzie gave him some instructions and the train 
rolled on again. There was a shimmer of heat al- 
ready over the bare country. Some slowly moving 
buffaloes with clumsy gait strolled through the scrub, 
picking up a mouthful of dry food here and there. 
The land looked like a bit of forgotten garden of 
which the owner had grown tired. The animals which 
moved about in it were all gray colored and dull. 

“I wonder if it would be safe to buy a little fruit?” 
said the bride. “I am so thirsty.” 

She produced a handbag and some coins, and when 
the train stopped again she offered one or two pieces 


Snow upon the Desert 301 

to a fruit seller and got some hot bananas in ex- 
change. 

“At home,’’ she said to herself, “they will be play- 
ing a hockey match against Fairsted, and perhaps 
they will still have fires/ ’ 

She determined to he brave, and sobbed a little. 

She and Mrs. Mackenzie rose and dressed them- 
selves in the narrow confines of the carriage, in which 
there seemed to be nothing but dust and too much 
luggage. 

‘ 1 There is still all to-day before I arrive, ’ ’ said the 
bride. ‘ * I don ’t think I can do any more sketching. ’ 9 

“We shall have to have the shutters closed soon,” 
said Mrs. Mackenzie. “But it makes the day seem 
longer when one can see nothing outside.” 

She slept after breakfast, and the bride, hearing 
Mrs. Antrobus stirring, attempted a little conversa- 
tion with her. 

“Have you been much in India?” she asked. 

“Yes, a long time.” 

“I feel sure I shall like it.” 

“I hope you will.” 

“A woman never has such a good time as in India. 
I mean to have several of my sisters out to stay with 
me.” 

“I know some people enjoy it very much.” 

Mrs. Mackenzie stirred in her sleep presently, and 
rousing herself said, “You must try and eat some 
breakfast. You eat nothing last night, and one is 


302 


Snow upon the Desert 

always apt to take a discouraging view of things on 
an empty stomach.” 

“Thank you, I will eat. Would you mind handing 
me up that tin of biscuits?” 

Having eaten, she produced a little mirror from 
her bag and looked in it for a long time, and then 
lay down again. 

“We are going to be in India for twenty years,” 
said the complacent bride, “but we think they will 
pass very quickly, and we shall still be comparatively 
young people when we go back.” 

“Twenty years is a long time,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus. 

“We mean to have everything perfect,” said the 
bride, who felt the heat less as she babbled of her own 
interests. “We shall not be well off, but we got a 
large number of pretty wedding presents and I am 
clever at making things.” 

“I hope you will be very happy,” said Mrs. An- 
trobus again, when the bride began to gather together 
her small baggage preparatory to leaving the train. 

Mrs. Mackenzie and the bride were to get out first. 
They began to collect scattered trifles in good time, 
and to put them into bags and dressing cases. 

“We are nearly there,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. In 
her passage to and fro in the railway carriage she 
stopped beside the upper bunk with her round red 
face on a level with Mrs. Antrobus’s feet. She pat- 
ted them and said, “You had better get up before 


Snow upon the Desert 303 

we leave or yon may go to sleep and miss your sta- 
tion/ ’ 

1 ‘I do not think I shall sleep/ ’ 

“How far are you going?’’ 

“Not very far.” 

“It’s your own business,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. 

“I only just wanted to know.” 

“I am going back.” 

I ‘ Back home again ? ’ ’ 

“I don’t know. Yes. I believe I am not very 
well.” 

“Nothing serious, I hope?” 

“Oh, no, nothing serious.” 

“I wish I was staying,” said Mrs. Mackenzie, “but, 
look here, my dear, I ’ll leave you my bearer. He can 
look after your things and come on when you have 
done with him. ’ ’ 

I I Indeed I shall do very well alone, thank you, and 
I will not take your servant from you.” 

“Good-bye, then,” said Mrs. Mackenzie. 

“Good afternoon,” said the prim bride. 

The bearer whom Mrs. Mackenzie had left came to 
see what services he could render, and he called the 
Eurasian ticket collector, and the station master, who 
was white, and bade them come to the sick lady. 

They thought she was dead at first, and there was 
confusion at the little station. The station master’s 
wife was not at home, and beyond administering a 
little water he did not know what to do. 


304 Snow upon the Desert 

The station was a desolate wayside place with a 
small waiting room, into which they carried Mrs. 
Antrobns. A crowd of natives began to collect round 
the door and to look at the lady who lay there. The 
stationmaster telegraphed up the line for a doctor, 
and Mrs. Antrobus, opening her eyes, said, “I also 
should like to send a telegram, ’ ’ and then found that 
she had not strength enough to write one. 

There were two young subalterns returning from 
a shooting expedition with tents and comfortable 
tent fittings under the shade of some trees not far 
away. When the train had rolled on and the station- 
master found himself helpless, he bethought himself 
of these two and sent a messenger to them asking 
them to come quickly. 

“It can’t be Mrs. Jack Antrobus,” said the boy 
who arrived first. He and his friend knew her a 
little, as everyone knew Mrs. Antrobus. 

They did what they could for her. She must be 
brought to their tent. A litter should be fetched. 
The flies were horrible in this little waiting room, and 
the heat was bad for her. 

A camp bed was made into a stretcher, and on it 
they carried Mrs. Antrobus to the bit of rising ground 
where their tents were. What could they do for her ? 
Had she been long ill? Where was Colonel Antro- 
bus, and ought they to send for him? They begged 
the stationmaster to wire again about a doctor. Ice 


Snow upon the Desert 305 

could be had from the next railway station, and a 
man on a pony was sent for it. 

They placed the narrow camp bed inside the tent, 
and opened wide the flies in order to create a draught. 
They put up a mosquito net, and, drawing off Mrs. 
Antrobus ’s shoes, they chafed her feet. One of the 
young men opened her bag and found some eau-de- 
Cologne, and sprinkled it upon her forehead. 

He thought how beautiful she looked when she was 
ill. But the tag of discolored hair was whiter than 
he remembered it to have been. 

She opened her eyes and thanked them quite calmly 
and collectedly for what they had done, and they 
told themselves hopefully, poor boys, that she could 
not be so very ill. 

“I am sorry to be so much trouble/ ’ said Mrs. 
Antrobus. 

The sun was burning itself out in a blaze of red 
and purple and gold behind the hills. The chirrups 
of insects that had slept all day began to make them- 
selves heard. The two boys sat one on either side of 
the slender figure stretched upon the bed, and from 
time to time one of them wandered restlessly to the 
door to see if the doctor was coming. 

4 ‘If only there was a little more air,’* she said, 
and they told her it would be cooler soon. 

Their faces grew white as evening fell, for Mrs. 
Antrobus had not spoken again. One of the boys, 
returning from the door of the tent, called softly for 


306 Snow upon the Desert 

a lamp, and, shading it behind a packing case, he 
placed it on the floor. The darkness had fallen sud- 
denly, and the light from the little lamp threw fan- 
tastic shadows on to the canvas roof of the tent. 

From their place beside the bed they could see, down 
below, the stationmaster walking up and down as 
though waiting for the incoming train that might 
bring the doctor. Some dogs barked ceaselessly, and 
they feared this might disturb her. They talked in 
whispers, asking each other what on earth they could 
do for her. They might get some more ice, and the 
stationmaster had sent for an ayah who was a good 
nurse. They heard the train coming in, and went 
nearer the bed to warn her that a doctor was now 
coming. 

1 ‘Good God, Billy, I believe she is dead.” 

We forgave her much after she was gone. Mrs. 
Antrobus was missed in India. 

It is the fashion to suppose that life is held very 
lightly in countries where climate and disease are the 
white man’s foes. “We are here to-day and gone 
to-morrow,” we say with an attempt at philosophy 
which is to take the place of mourning. But Mrs. 
Antrobus had been intensely alive. It was difficult 
to realize her enforced absence. 

We used to ask ourselves stupidly at first why she 
was no longer at polo matches and paper chases. Al- 
most we felt defrauded by the robbery that death had 


307 


Snow upon the Desert 

made. It seemed hard that anyone so full of life and 
so good-looking should be under the ground while we 
were still above, alive and seeing the sun. 

We said that with all her faults — for we could not 
forget her faults even when she was dead — there was 
no one like her. Some of us even said, meaning every 
word we uttered, that if it could have done her any 
good we would have died in her place. 

We shall get over her loss, no doubt. None of us 
mourn forever. But we know that not even custom 
will cure us all at once of missing her. 

She will always be associated in our minds with 
frivolous things. Perhaps that is what makes the 
break so sharp. It is when the rickshaws are racing 
homeward on the moonlit roads at Simla, or the ponies 
are working their best in a hard-fought polo match, 
that we shall wish regretfully that she was there to 
enjoy it. 

She was buried where she died, and two boys were 
not ashamed of the tears they shed for her, and one 
man stood by her grave and neither shed tears nor 
said anything. 

They told him what they could about her, although 
he was a stranger to them, as if he had been some 
dear and intimate friend of hers, and they are sure 
that nothing will ever make them regret their confi- 
dences. 

Already perhaps she is only a memory to most 
people in India — one of those women whose very bril- 


308 Snow upon the Desert 

liance caused it to burn itself out too soon. She 
came out here — and most of us can recall her like, 
even if we never knew Mrs. Antrobus — when she was 
very youthful, very full of courage, and with her 
beauty and her great charm to refresh us, and we 
loved her and blamed her, found fault with her, and 
could not do without her. We were not always mer- 
ciful to her, but perhaps that need not be remem- 
bered now. At one time she was perhaps one of the 
most prominent figures in India, and certainly the 
most admired. 

But the English population is constantly changing 
here. In time only a few old fogies will remember 
her. She— 

Like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, 

Lighting a little hour or two — is gone. 

She was often not very wise, and we frequently 
misjudged her. But she seemed to belong particu- 
larly to us, and her death has left us with a sense of 
being defrauded. She was in many ways a timid 
woman, in spite of her physical courage, and we hope 
that after some stormy voyaging she was not alone 
when she crossed the Last Ferry. 

About her wit and her beauty there was something 
that made them very attractive: and a world in 
which there are not too many amusing people seems 
dull without her. 


THE END 


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